Hi,
I am also new to this site, but am quite familiar with milling timber. We also live in Taree and have had a few trees milled, by various operators with portable mills, for our fences. Unfortunately, this can be a costly learning curve. The first miller we had did not set the timber up properly and the rails ended up with a bow in them, this lead to a waste of good timber. The guy we use now is very good at milling timber with his portable mill.(up to 6.2 meter lengths) The charging has varied as to a per hour cost or cost per cubic meter (the first miller charged this way). We much prefer the per hour cost. I'm not sure how much he charged, my husband organised it.

The timber has been milled into 4x2, 8x2 rails and some slabs from a variety of hardwood timbers. Our neighbours found good use for the roundbacks and were quite happy to take them. I have also contacted a timber mill that will do solar kiln drying of the slabs, and we can take our timber there. The advise from this mill was excellent and the slabs will go there in January. The price quoted was $200 for about 2 cubic meters, which I think is reasonable for the timber I will be getting out of it. We may also have them put it through a thicknesser while it is there. Hubby can probably give more advice than I can, but he is not interested in computers, but will talk till the cows come home on the phone.
If you would like contact details of our miller just let me know. He also lives in the Manning Valley.

Firene