Wayne Barry's Tree Services

Wayne Barry's Tree Services is a locally owned and operated family business that has been looking after trees across the Greater Geelong region for more than 30 years. It runs out of Batesford, just west of Geelong, and the person you deal with day to day is David, whose mobile is the number to call or text for a quick reply. Thirty years on the tools means the crew has seen most of what a Geelong backyard or rural block can throw at them, and they have a name for taking on the limited access and hard to reach jobs that other outfits would rather leave alone.

The bulk of the work is tree removal. That covers everything from a single dead or dangerous tree hard up against a house to clearing a paddock's worth of timber, and the crew is set up to take large trees down in tight suburban yards where there is no room for error. They carry public liability insurance of up to $20 million, which is the kind of cover you want to see when a heavy limb or a whole tree is coming down near a roof, a fence line or the powerlines.

Tree pruning and maintenance makes up the other side of the business. Rather than just hacking a tree back, the team prunes to keep established trees healthy, well shaped and clear of gutters, roofs and neighbouring properties. When a block needs opening up they handle tree and land clearing, and they finish the job properly with stump removal and grinding so there is no stump left to trip over, sprout suckers or get in the way of a new build or garden.

For trees that are too tall, too brittle or too awkward to climb, Wayne Barry's brings in tower hire, using an elevated work platform to get an arborist safely up into the canopy. The arborists hold Red Card accreditation, so the cutting and rigging is done to a recognised standard. Nothing much goes to landfill either: the timber and green waste from each job is run through the chipper and sold on as garden mulch, so the same trees that come down end up feeding gardens around the district.

Wayne Barry's Tree Services works across Greater Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula, the Surf Coast and all the surrounding areas, from the townships out to the coast. The workshop is open Monday to Thursday from 7am to 5pm and Friday until 3.30pm, and the quickest way to get a quote is to text David a few details and a photo of the tree. For anyone in the Geelong area after an experienced, insured and properly qualified crew, three decades of local tree work is a fair bit of reassurance.