Once we decided to go tree farming, in mid-2004, the next step was to find some land on which to do it. At the start, we were not aware of the many different options for gaining access to land for tree farming (like leasing land or entering into various forms of joint venture with landowners). We just thought we needed to buy some land.
As it turned out, this was not a bad decision, since our Superannuation Fund could not invest directly in the tree farming business. However, it could buy land as an investment (just like buying a house or a block of apartments for investment purposes), and then have Green & Gold Tree Farms lease the land for the purposes of tree farming. Even if the tree farming business goes up in smoke (literally or figuratively!), the land could still be a good investment for superannuation purposes if it is bought in an area which is experiencing substantial appreciation (as areas on the fringe of Melbourne are likely to be).
We wanted land in reasonable proximity to where we lived at Taggerty. So we looked around at various blocks that were about 100 acres (40 ha). This is a common rural block size in the area, and is just below a threshhold size for various planning regulations. We looked at blocks in Taggerty, Alexandra and neighbouring districts, before settling on the block at Blue Range Close in Thornton, which we bought in February 2005.
How did we know we'd made the right decision? Well, we didn't! But we liked the look of the block, it had an seasonal creek and two dams, it had many large remnant trees (indicating that trees would grow on the block) and the neighbouring forest areas had high basal areas (indicating that the productivity of the site might be OK) - although at the time we didn't even know what a basal area was!!
