Tree removal in Mawson Lakes: what's local
From sheep run to suburb
Much of the land was once The Levels, a sheep breeding property founded around 1876. Delfin began redeveloping it with the State Government and the City of Salisbury in 1998, and Lendlease finished the job in 2011.
Villages and apartments
Mawson Central is almost all apartments, while lakefront homes in The Peninsula are mostly two-storey. In a block of units, check who manages the gardens before booking anyone. See strata and commercial tree work.
The lakes
The suburb was built around two man-made lakes, with the 7-hectare Sir Douglas Mawson Lake at its centre. Since the 2011 handover, the City of Salisbury manages the public spaces, so a tree in a reserve is the council's.
Two water supplies
Homes here have a second, recycled water supply from the Bolivar plant. That extra set of pipes is one more reason to have services located before a stump is ground or roots are dug out.
Tree removal permits in Mawson Lakes
Mawson Lakes trees fall under the City of Salisbury. A trunk of 1 metre or more around, at 1 metre above the ground, makes a tree regulated, and approval comes before any removal or hard cut. Our Salisbury permit page sets out the council's process.
There's a local example. In September 2025, Salisbury's assessment panel let a Mawson Lakes primary school remove one regulated tree and one significant tree, on the condition that two new trees went in for the first and three for the second, within 12 months, or that money went into the urban trees fund instead.
In that decision, replacements couldn't go within 3 metres of a house or in-ground pool. On a compact block, work out where a new tree would fit before you lodge anything.
Questions to ask an arborist in Mawson Lakes
- Have you checked whether the tree is regulated, and can you show me the measurement?
- If council approval is needed, will you help with the application or a report?
- How will the tree get out if there's only a narrow side path or a shared wall?
- Who lodges the service-location enquiry before the stump is ground?
- Does the clean-up include the stump, the roots and the mulch?
Hiring an arborist in Mawson Lakes
Here, we'd ask first whether the tree really has to go. Plenty of Mawson Lakes trees are still young enough that pruning or a root barrier solves the problem, and a healthy tree only gets more valuable as the suburb matures. If removal is the answer and the tree is regulated, we'd sort out the replanting plan before lodging, because replacement conditions have been part of recent Salisbury approvals.