Concrete Sleeper Retaining Wall in Bentley Park

This Bentley Park property needed a retaining wall to fix a sloping site beside the house that limited how much of the yard could actually be used. The ground was patchy and overgrown, and the slope ran the length of the block. The owners wanted a long-term, low-maintenance fix that could handle the tropical Cairns rainfall.

We went with a concrete sleeper retaining wall. It holds up better than timber over time and stands up to the wet season.

Work started with the excavator. We cut into the existing slope and set out the line of the wall. Steel posts went in first, then the grey concrete sleepers were dropped in between them to build the wall up. One of the photos shows the mini excavator working alongside the posts and sleepers as the wall took shape.

Drainage is the part that gets missed on a lot of walls. We placed drainage aggregate at the base as the wall went up, so water behind it has somewhere to go rather than building pressure against the sleepers. That matters here with the rain we get.

Once the wall was up, we backfilled behind it and levelled the ground off. The soil was graded back to create a flat area where there used to be slope. A tip truck was on the street for the spoil coming off the site.

The finished wall runs along the frontage and side of the house. Behind it sits a levelled earth bed, ready for the owners to plant out or finish however they like. A young staked tree already sits in one section. It's straightforward earthworks, but it opens up ground that couldn't be used before.