One of my neighbours hired one, the smallest you can get to go down narrow accessways, to dig out his sloping garden.

He managed to tip it over into his hard-to-reach garden, so the hire company had to bring another one to try and get the first out. That second one also fell into his garden.

I had visions of this sort of thing happening:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-series-of-unfortunate-events/

So, er, don’t do that!

Who cares if it takes longer, driving a digger yourself is FUN!
You can get the hang of it in a hour or so.
We had one for a weekend and it was great, not worth getting a JCB + driver and way cheaper, took a bit longer but it was hilarious (till a track came off and we had to wrench it back on!).
Get an already battered one, that way it won’t matter if you’re a bit cack handed

Genuinely disappointed in people saying to also get an operator! IT’S A MINI DIGGER!

I’m disappointed at the people saying get a digger. Its only a pond! How pathetically atrophied can we all be to start discussing diggers and operators without even sticking a shovel in the ground first just to see what happens

I hate digging, I’m tall and suffer from various bits of nerve damage and working and lifting from below my feet isn’t my favourite kind of exercise. But digging a pond is only a little bit of digging. I made a pond for my gf’s mum a couple of years ago, depending on how the OP is arriving at their figure of 8 tons I’d say that one was approx half that size. Whole thing was done in the day – digging the hole took an hour and that was as much planning and marking it out on the fly as actually labouring. It’s easy – just get on with it.