Allansford's South West Advanced Trees counts the cost of fallen tree

Mr Winters lost a fence, irrigation lines and rows of ornamental trees, worth about $5000, when a large tree on his property fell on Friday, September 8.

Mr Winters said they watched as the "massive" red gum tree came crashing down, destroying everything in its path.

He estimated the fallen gum tree was about 30 to 40 years old and said he and a team member worked to move their truck and as many trees as possible from its path before it came down.

"The tree was tipping over towards our big truck," Mr Winters said. "I moved the trees out of the way and 10 minutes later it fell over.

"I saw the tree rocking on the root ball. We tried to move as many trees until it was unsafe and then it just fell over."

He said they managed to move about 150 trees before the large gum fell but they were forced to leave another 150 to 200 trees behind.

"We've lost the fence and four advanced tree rows and irrigation lines," he said. "I'll reconstruct them and fix them up. They're all bent and smashed so it will be a bit of a rebuild."

Mr Winters said the trees were mainly ornamental pear trees, ash, golden ash and claret ash trees and the overall damage bill would be between $10,000 and $15,000.

He said the fallen tree had done "quite a bit of damage" and it was sad to watch his hard work ruined but he was trying to be positive, grateful no one was injured.

"If I lose four or five grand's worth of trees, well no-one was hurt. That's the main thing," he said.

He said he would have to foot the bill as it was difficult to insure the trees he'd grown.

"It's unfortunate," he said. "They're like cattle (hard to insure). There's too many variables so it's hard to get insurance on living stock."

He said earlier in the day he thought the business had fared alright in the wild weather.

"We thought we got away quite unscathed," he said. "There was obviously a lot of damage. There's a big clean up effort we've got to have but there was no real severe damage."

The farm grows about 10,000 trees that are three to four metres tall and supplied through his Lava Street All Seasons nursery as well as other wholesalers Australia-wide.

When speaking to The Standard in June 2022 Mr Winters said he had invested $1.2 million to set up the business at the Allansford property.

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