Every winter we have the same conversation with someone standing in a driveway at 6am looking at a limb through the patio roof. And almost every time, the tree gave warning months earlier that nobody was looking for.
The Illawarra gets hit two different ways. East coast lows drive sustained onshore wind and enormous rainfall into ground that is already saturated. And the escarpment funnels and accelerates westerly gusts over the ridgeline and down into the suburbs beneath it. Either one will find a weak tree. Together they are how healthy-looking trees end up on their side overnight.
Here is what to check in April, so you are not the 6am phone call in July.
1. Walk the base of every large tree
You are looking for cracked or lifted soil on the opposite side to the lean, soil that looks mounded near the trunk, and any gap opening between trunk and ground. That is root plate movement, and it is the single most reliable predictor of a whole-tree failure. In saturated Illawarra clay it can go from visible to failed in one system.
Also look for fungal brackets. Shelf fungi growing out of the trunk or buttress roots mean decay inside the structural wood. The tree can look perfectly healthy up top while the load-bearing timber is compromised.
2. Look up and find the dead wood
Stand back far enough to see the whole canopy against the sky. Bare grey limbs with no leaf are dead and they will come down, the only question is when and onto what. Eucalypts are very good at holding dead wood for years before releasing it.
Deadwooding is one of the cheapest jobs we do and one of the highest value. A crew can clear the dead material out of a mature tree in a couple of hours.
3. Check the branch unions
Where two limbs of similar size fork off the trunk at a tight V, that union is weak. Included bark gets trapped in the joint and the two stems push each other apart instead of growing together. Under storm loading these split. If you can see a vertical crack running down from the fork, that tree needs attention now.
U-shaped unions with a wide angle are strong. Tight V unions on a big tree are a liability, and they can often be managed with weight reduction or cabling rather than removal.
4. Get the crown thinned, not topped
The most effective storm-proofing available is crown thinning: selectively removing internal branches so wind moves through the canopy rather than shoving against a solid mass. Combined with end-weight reduction, taking the leverage off the outer thirds of long limbs, it dramatically cuts the load a storm can apply.
What does not help is topping. Cutting leaders back to stubs makes the tree push out dozens of fast, weakly attached shoots. Within three or four years you have a denser canopy sitting on wounds that never sealed, which is materially more dangerous than what you started with.
5. Clear the roof and the gutters
Any limb resting on or overhanging a roof is a lever. In wind it moves, and what it moves against is your tiles. A crown lift to get clearance above the roofline is fast, cheap and eliminates a whole category of damage. Same for anything within about two metres of a service line, where Endeavour Energy has clearance requirements we work to.
6. Know your species
- Blackbutt and Sydney blue gum get very tall and shed limbs from height. The big escarpment eucalypts are the ones worth an assessment.
- Turpentine is dense and heavy. When one fails it takes whatever is underneath with it.
- Camphor laurel has a huge canopy on often decayed structure, and the root plate is shallow relative to the top.
- Coral tree is brittle and drops whole limbs in still weather, let alone a storm.
- Cocos palms shed heavy fronds and seed heads year round.
- Norfolk Island pines along the coast take severe wind shear and go one-sided, which loads the trunk unevenly.
7. Sort out access before you need it
Unglamorous but it matters. If a tree comes down in your backyard at midnight, the crew needs to get gear in. Locked side gates with no key on site, a boat across the only access, and dogs in the yard all add time to a job you are paying an after-hours rate for. On steep blocks it can be the difference between a night job and a daylight one.
If it fails anyway
Get everyone away from underneath and from any wall or gutter the tree is touching. If any part of it is on or near powerlines, ring Endeavour Energy on 131 003 and stay at least eight metres clear. Treat every line as live. Then photograph everything before anyone cuts anything, because your insurer will want it. Then ring us.
The better outcome is the call you make in April instead. Book a pre-season assessment and we will walk your trees and tell you what actually needs doing, which is usually less than people expect.
Want an arborist to actually look at it?
Free assessment across the Illawarra. Honest answer about whether it needs doing, and a fixed price if it does.