Anyone who has taken on a block of untouched Australian bush knows the job is bigger than it looks from the ute. What reads as “a bit of scrub” on the drive in turns out to be waist-high lantana, wattle regrowth, fallen limbs and a paddock full of stumps that will wreck a slasher and swallow a working week.
Clearing acreage well comes down to one thing: matching the right land clearing equipment to the job in front of you and the machine you already run. Get that right and work that looks like a month of chainsaw graft becomes a few clean passes. Get it wrong and you burn fuel, break gear and go around twice.
This guide walks through the equipment that does the actual work, in the order you will use it: knocking down scrub, felling and processing trees and grinding out the stumps that get left behind. EZ Machinery designs and builds this gear in our Brisbane workshop, so we will talk about what each attachment does and where it earns its keep.
What clearing a block actually involves
Clearing acreage breaks down into three separate jobs, and each one needs different gear:
- Cutting down the scrub, grass and light regrowth covering the ground.
- Felling small trees and mulching the timber and woody debris.
- Grinding out the stumps and root balls left behind.
Most people underestimate the last one. Knocking the vegetation flat feels like progress, but leave the stumps and you have a paddock you cannot mow, plough or build on. The equipment needed for land clearing covers all three jobs, and the right setup depends on your block size, your machine, and how you plan to use the land afterwards.
Clearing scrub and undergrowth
Every clearing job starts here. Before you can get near a tree trunk or a stump, you have to deal with the scrub, tall grass and low woody growth covering the ground. On most Australian blocks that means lantana, blackberry, wattle regrowth and the kind of tangled undergrowth that hides everything else. The right tool depends on how thick and how woody the growth is.
Slashers for grass and light scrub
For grass, weeds and light scrub, a slasher is the fastest way to knock a paddock down to ground level. Run one on a skid steer and you can open up site lines, tidy firebreaks and cut access tracks in a fraction of the time it takes by hand.
Our EZ Skid Steer Slasher is built for exactly this kind of ground clearing and site prep. The EZ-SKD-1500 suits skid steers up to 95 hp and comes in low and high flow configurations, so it matches what your loader can actually deliver. It handles grass and low shrubs at pace, and because we build it in Brisbane from heavy-duty materials, it stands up to the knocks that come with clearing rough ground.
A slasher has its limit, though. Once the growth turns woody, into thick lantana, saplings and small timber, you want something that mulches rather than just cuts.
Flail mulchers for thick regrowth
When the scrub gets serious, a flail mulcher is the tool for the job. Rather than laying vegetation down in a mat you then have to rake up, a flail mulcher shreds scrub, regrowth and small timber into mulch that drops onto the ground and breaks down, so there is nothing to cart away afterwards.
Our flail mulchers come in a range of sizes to suit different machines and workloads:
- The 75-EZ hydraulic flail mulcher suits smaller carriers, from 1.5 to 5 tonne excavators through to skid steers, which makes it a solid fit for tighter blocks and lighter regrowth.
- Our swinging flail mulchers use pivoting hammers that ride over rocks and stumps instead of catching on them, so they handle uneven and rocky ground well.
- The EZ skid steer mulcher runs a dual-speed hydraulic motor and a fixed-tooth, dynamically balanced rotor for steady cutting even at speed, with a hydraulic front hood that lets you control how fine the finished mulch comes out.
We match the motor to your carrier, whether that is a Komatsu, CAT, Hitachi or Kobelco excavator, or a Bobcat, Case or Kanga skid steer. If your machine is not on the standard list, we build the mulcher to suit it.
Felling and processing trees
Once the undergrowth is gone, the trees are next. This is where you need heavy-duty land clearing equipment. Grass and scrub are forgiving; timber is not. Trying to process trees with an undersized attachment is how you cook a hydraulic motor and lose days to downtime.
For small to medium trees and the woody debris that comes with them, a forestry-grade mulcher does two jobs at once: it brings the material down and turns it into mulch in the same pass. That saves you the second round of work that comes with felling by chainsaw and then dealing with a paddock full of logs and branches.
Our EZ-FF fixed flail forestry mulchers are built for this heavier work. The fixed-tooth rotor and reinforced housing keep cutting through saplings and small timber all day, in the conditions Australian clearing throws at them. Because the whole unit is designed and built in house, we can spec it to match the excavator or skid steer you already run rather than making you buy a bigger machine to suit the attachment.
For larger timber, you will still reach for a chainsaw or an excavator-mounted grab and saw to fell and section the trunk before mulching the rest. The mulcher earns its keep on everything the saw leaves behind: the crowns, the limbs and the regrowth.
We cover mulcher selection in more detail, including how to size one to your machine and your vegetation, in our guide to choosing a mulcher.
Removing stumps: the job most people skip
Here is where a lot of clearing jobs stall. The scrub is gone, the trees are down and mulched, and the block finally looks clear. Then the stumps start causing problems.
Left in the ground, stumps get in the way of everything you want to do next. You cannot run a mower or slasher over them without risking the gear. They make ploughing, fencing and levelling difficult. They send up suckers and regrow, and they sit there rotting for years, drawing termites closer to anything you build nearby.
Pulling stumps with a chain tears up the ground and leaves craters you then have to backfill. A stump grinder is the cleaner option. It chews the stump down below ground level so you can cover it over and move on, with the root ball ground into chips rather than levered out of the soil.
Our EZ Stump-It range is built for the excavator, skid steer, mini-loader and backhoe markets, so you can grind stumps with the machine you already have on site instead of hiring a dedicated stump grinder. Like the rest of our clearing gear, it is designed and manufactured in Brisbane and matched to your carrier.
Choosing the right equipment for your block
There is no single piece of equipment for clearing land that does the whole job. What you actually need comes down to three things: what you are running, how big the block is and what the rules allow where you are.
Match the attachment to your machine
The biggest cost in land clearing is usually the carrier, the skid steer, excavator or tractor that drives the attachment. So the smart move is to match the attachment to the machine you already own, not the other way around.
- Skid steers are the workhorses of small to mid-size clearing. They are compact, easy to move between jobs, and run slashers, mulchers and stump grinders well.
- Excavators give you more reach and more hydraulic power, which suits steeper ground, bigger timber and heavier mulching.
- Tractors come into their own on open, flatter country. PTO-driven slashers and mulchers make capable tractor land clearing equipment for paddocks and larger acreage, and PTO stump grinders let you clear stumps off the same machine.
Because we build our attachments in house, we match the motor, flow and mounting to your specific carrier. If you are not sure what your machine can drive, that is worth a phone call before you buy anything.
Block size and how much you are clearing
The scale of the job changes the gear you want.
- For a small block, a few acres, firebreaks, or tidying up around a house, compact attachments on a skid steer or mini-loader do the job without the cost of larger plant. This is the small land clearing equipment most acreage owners actually need.
- For larger acreage or ongoing contract work, heavy-duty land clearing equipment earns its keep. A forestry mulcher and a stump grinder sized to a full-size excavator will clear more, faster, and hold up to continuous use.
A common question is what the cheapest way to clear land is. For a single small job, hiring a contractor is often cheaper than buying. But if you clear regularly, or you own the machine already, the right attachment pays for itself quickly in saved labour and contractor fees, and you keep the gear for the next job.
Know the rules before you start
Land clearing in Australia is regulated, and the rules vary by state and even by local council. Native vegetation, waterways and habitat for protected species all carry specific protections, and clearing without the right approval can bring serious fines.
Before you start, check with your local council and your state government. Some clearing is exempt. In certain bushfire-prone parts of New South Wales, for example, the 10/50 Vegetation Clearing Scheme lets people clear some vegetation close to a home without approval, though the entitlement areas and limits are specific. Other clearing needs a permit or a property vegetation plan. It is far cheaper to confirm what you are allowed to do than to clear first and sort it out later.
Get your acreage sorted
Clearing a block is only hard when you fight it with the wrong gear. Break the job into its stages, cut the scrub, process the trees, then grind the stumps, and match the right attachment to the machine you run, and even a rough block comes good in a handful of passes.
Every attachment in this guide is designed and built at our workshop in Brisbane, made for Australian conditions and matched to your carrier. And if the standard machine is not quite right for your block, our team will modify it or build one that is.
Have a look through our full range of land clearing attachments or call the team on 1300 736 982 to talk through your block and work out the right setup for the job.
