We have been interested in alternative lifestyles for as long as we can remember. We have always been avid readers of such magazines as Grass Roots and Earth Garden. We have also been very keen bushwalkers and enjoyed living and relaxing in the Australian landscape and bushland. In order to understand the bush we love so much we have also read as much as we could about the environment and magazines. David has even assisted with editorial review on the AG Blue Mountains book and the World Heritage submission for the Blue Mountains. It was thus only natural that we would eventually want to settle in the Blue Mountains in a home that was as ecologically sustainable as possible while surrounding ourselves with bushland. In 2000 Suzanne was lucky enough to find 49 hectares of State Forest that was available as a perpetual lease to live on and preserve as a sanctuary. We decided that the home we built on this land would need to be as self-sufficient and as sustainable as possible. After some discussion with friends we discovered the earthship. The earthship is a home that is built on passive solar principles from earth and recycled materials including car tyres. The land also offered sufficient space to develop an organic permaculture garden sufficient that we could if careful supply a significant part of our needs. After the examples of Jackie French and Linda Cockburn we are hoping to be able to supply as much of our food needs as we can and also manage to supply all our water and power without having to draw on outside resources. With careful planning it should also be possible to recycle all our excess materials on site. Since neither of us have ever had any building experience we planned our house in two stages. This house was also to be only the third earthship to be built in Australia and so local expertise was not abundant. We therefore planned a main house and a “granny cottage”, with the cottage being built first so we could learn how to build and what the pit falls maybe before tackling the main house. At this stage we have almost completed the cottage and have the external walls of the main house almost completed. The house’s power is supplied by solar power. The site has no outside water or power supplies. We have managed to live for three years on our own power resources and as time goes by we are getting better and better. There have been times when we could have done better but it is a learning curve and we are not giving up much in the way of luxuries. At the same time as we are building the houses we have been establishing our garden. We have currently managed to establish a well-stocked vegetable garden and are well on our way to establishing a wide range of fruit trees and berry fruits. In fact our garden is doing so well we are now looking at ways we can sell excesses through local farmers markets. In this way we maybe able to use our own production to get those few extra items we cannot produce ourselves through what we produce. We also have a farm dam stocked with trout. We are also in the process of establishing chooks for eggs and we have raised some pigs for meat and may do so again. We have also reared goats to use for weed control and maybe some milk. Many of our plans evolve and change as we learn. We have had to learn to live compatibly with numerous wallabies and three resident wombats in the garden. There are of course the numerous birds including magpies, bowerbirds, parrots and currawongs that just love our blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. We have also learnt to live with a variety of snakes, lizards and other wildlife particularly around the compost bins. While we have been getting our home established we have also been trying to learn as much as we can about our surrounding environment. Our home is in a subalpine forest where temperatures can drop as low as –10 C in the winter and rise as high as 40 C in the summer. A permanent creek that has platypus and other wildlife borders the land to the north. The eucalyptus forest abounds in scribbly gum, snow gum and candle bark with a wide range of flowering plants including native orchids and violets, wattles and peas. We have managed to identify 75 birds and animals and 85 native plants and flowers although we feel we are still only scratching the surface. Our immediate plans include getting the main house completed and the garden up and running smoothly. It is also our hope to establish the property as an example to others of what can be achieved. We very much want to create a hands-on learning environment that encourages the development of personal and family ecological identity and place-based sustainability in adults and children. All ideas are based on a philosophical belief that people will only make the big lifestyle changes their lives and our planet need if they have a positive emotional experience with them first. Our ideas and our property is being developed to support and demonstrate hard and soft technologies of sustainable living. We plan to have a threefold focus. The first is to create a learning environment within which adults and children can become familiar in hands-on workshops with the technologies of sustainable building, power and water supply and usage, and food production and preparation so that they can take these skills back into their own home situations. The second is to develop a range of workshops and supportive materials that apply the principles of sustainability to such areas as family life, health, cultural and community development, with the aim of connecting all aspects of human life into the sustainability project. The third is to encourage the development of an ecological identity in both adults and children. We will use place-based and celebratory and artistic activities that allow participants to experience and play with being part of a natural environment here at Brynmawr with the challenge to apply them in the participants’ own home place. As we have discussed our project is still very much in its early stages and progress is slow based on available finance. It is our intent that we will only present things or ideas that we have tried and done ourselves. It is our goal now not only to get the house and garden completed but to start opening up the property for occasional open days when people can come and see what progress has been made. Finally we would like to create the opportunity to people and organisations to either use our property to try out sustainable practices or to offer suggestions in ways we could improve our sustainable living and that we could trial run some of these to find out if they are feasible.
Tags: Alternative Building Organic Gardening Energy Environment
