Looks amazing mate if you don't mind me asking or you want to send me a pm how much has it roughly costed you to make I have wanted to get a pit built and just gathering ideas and all that stuff I really like how yours looks mate you have done a great job on it.
Hey mate thanks for the compliments, always feels good to know people like your projects.
With all my projects, i try to spend as little money as possible. I much prefer to find cheap alternatives instead of handing over cash to everyone when i don't need to.
For this enclosure, all i really payed for was the pine studs, the mesh, pond and fixings.
I use 90mm x 35mm NON TREATED pine studs. CCA treated pine is pretty toxic stuff so you don't want your lizards licking it haha. You can pick up 3m lengths for around $10 each and i used around 8 so lets say roughly $80 for the studs.
The aviary mesh comes in different lengths and widths. I used a 30m roll at 900mm wide. That cost me around $70
The pond i got from bunnings for $200
I didn't keep track of the fixings but that will change a lot depending on your enclosure.
All the rocks, branches and the tree i got for free. Give a tree lopping company a call and find out when they are taking down a tree which would work well for what you want. They shouldn't mind you taking a few branches.
For rocks, call an excavation company or something similar to see if you can grab a few rocks during a job.
I am lucky in this respect because i am a carpenter so i get to grab all this stuff while i'm at work.
As for all the plants, i already have a lot of my own. My uncle is also flora fanatic so i get a lot of orchids, bromeliads, air plants, succulents and various other things from him for free. I also collect a lot of my plants from the wild (legally of course, from peoples properties i know)
Basically, it all comes down to how you go about it. If you get in contact with the right people, you don't have to spend much money and your imagination is really the only thing in the way of you and a cool enclosure.
Hope this all helps, look forward to seeing a few pics of your project when you get started.
Hamish