What I would have given for one of these to do my landscaping at home

And the answer is.... $2,000 USD. Yea, you should have forked it over. Sure saves a lot of wear and tear on the human.
Actually the answer should be less for this one - I overpaid for its condition. But I've never had one and it was close by so I figure it's cheap tuition. And if I ever feel finished with it (which isn't likely unless something else takes it place) then I get some of it back from the next owner. For now, it works OK. I have grand ideas about going through it and making it work like new - that's my line of occupation, though with a different type of equipment. We'll see how that goes.

Not sure how things are down under these days, but here in the states it seems to me that the difficult - and expensive - thing about hiring anything out is that nobody knows what doing a good job is anymore. I gave up long ago and just try to do everything myself because I end up doing it myself to fix the hired help's work anyway. Much less gets done, but at least it's to my liking. Kind of sad. Maybe it's just me.

Wow sorry. That was depressing.
Hey, getta load of that cute Tonka toy I just bought!
Ahh... that's better.