Michael Green

Writer and producer

Down to earth

In Community development, Environment, The Big Issue on

Communes are back. Actually, they never went away. They’ve shaken the naked-hippie image to offer a practical alternative to modern challenges.


ONE idyllic Friday afternoon – like many afternoons at the Homeland community – an impromptu parents’ circle formed outside Rose West and Kai Tipping’s small, rented house.


Rose knelt on the grass in her long skirt, while their elder daughter, Mali, home from primary school, alternately strode and sprinted around the open space with her friends. Their other daughter, Persia – two years old and possessed of an altogether wicked zest for life, laboured indiscriminately in the vegetable patch.


Two years ago, the young couple had left the city for the country. They sought a manageable, affordable lifestyle and more freedom and safety for their daughters. They found a commune. And in that, they’re not alone.


TWENTY-FOUR years before Rose and Kai made their life-altering move, Phil Bourne’s family moved to Seymour, 100km north of Melbourne, to start a communal living project with another like-minded family.


The small community was named, aptly, Commonground. Over the years other families have come and gone; the community hasn’t yet grown as Bourne had hoped. But the original two families, the core group, remain, and have since formed links with others through Cohousing Australia – a hub for communal living projects, which Bourne chairs.


Living enmeshed with others isn’t always ideal. There are times when, as he says, Bourne would have preferred to be a “hermit”. But he still feels that, ultimately, it’s worth it. “It’s what we term a high-input, high reward lifestyle,” he explains.


Recently, Bourne and the old guard of communal dwellers have been sensing that people are, once again, beginning to see value in their way of life. “I don’t know whether we’re kidding ourselves, but when the people who’ve been in this scene a long time get together, we’re convinced there’s a new energy around,” he says. “People are looking at what’s happening with the world and they’re hungry to find other options.


“In current times of climate change, peak oil and social isolation, when the single person household is the fastest growing housing sector, we think it’s time for the next wave of intentional communities,” Bourne says. “But to get from dreaming it to doing it is not easy.”


In Australia, rural landsharing communities flourished throughout the 1970s. After the 10-day Aquarius festival in Nimbin in 1973 – often described as Australia’s version of Woodstock – a number of attendees stayed on and started utopian communities throughout northern NSW.


The movement was inspired by New Age and simple-living ideas, together with concern about spiking oil prices, environmental degradation and the limits to economic growth.


“The intentional communities of the ’60s and ’70s had a lot of good intentions, but the application was vague,” Bourne concedes. “In many ways, it was downtrodden by the mainstream as hippie nonsense – a percentage of which had truth to it and a percentage of which missed the point.”


The Homeland community was founded in 1977, on a former dairy farm half-an-hour by car from Bellingen, an artsy town on NSW’s mid-north coast. Now, about three-dozen adults and children live there. The members aren’t allowed to own any land, but they can own their home. Each adult pays $30 per week in rent to cover upkeep on the extensive shared facilities, including the recreation house, guests’ cottage, laundry, shower block, barns, orchards and festival fields.


The community was modelled on the Findhorn Foundation, a spiritual community in Scotland, famous for mystical gardeners who grew supernaturally large cabbages on sandy soil. But the connection vanished in the early 1980s, as the overseas philosophy became obscured by the haze of marijuana smoke closer to home.


Like all communities, membership and motivation has ebbed and flowed. “Five years ago,” one long-term Homeland resident explains, “we were lamenting that we were becoming a geriatric farm.” Then a number of young families started moving onto the land.


AT Homeland, the afternoon continued on its comfortably unplanned course. A friend of Rose and Kai dropped in with his toddlers, and two other young mums from up the hill happened by with their daughters. “There are no play dates on Homeland,” Rose explained later. “You don’t ring up the other mother, organise a week in advance and go to a cafe and spend money. It just happens.”


While the children whooped, the adults spoke about placentas and sleeping patterns, the uncomfortable crevices that ticks find, and the humility required when asking someone else to remove them.


It was an earthy conversation, not an astral one: more permaculture than counter-culture.

 

IN all likelihood, this kind of practical exchange wouldn’t be uncommon among latter day communal dwellers. “You don’t get naked hippies running around the hills any more,” says Dr Bill Metcalf, a ‘communitarian’ scholar at Griffith University who has published several books on the subject.


“A lot of people see communal living as a very sensible option,” Metcalf continues. “They aren’t looking at it in the utopian sense – it’s just a much more sane way to live in a rural area. The interest is moving to a strata of society that wouldn’t have considered it 20 years ago, because it was seen as too outrageous.”


Metcalf says there are hundreds of intentional communities throughout Australia, from spiritual groups to survivalists, nudist colonies to eco-villages.


“No matter where you go, we’ve got these communities. Some are very upmarket, some very downmarket.”


For two decades, Metcalf has been working on an encyclopaedia of communities established in Australia before the ‘baby boomer’ generation. When he began, he expected it to be a brief undertaking. But, he says, “I keep finding new ones faster than I can research them. In every state there are amazing examples: there are lesbian separatist communes from the 1870s; groups who believed in a single tax; nudist groups; vegetarians. You name it, they’re out there.”

 

JUST as the kinds of communities and structures change over time, utopian dreams are also tempered from within. Close to Rose and Kai’s house, along a short walking track, is an open-walled barn, set among small beds of flowers and vegetables. It is home to Jacque Flavell, who has lived on Homeland for 22 years.


“What we’ve gradually come to realise is that you don’t have to try and work it all out so you love everyone,” she said. “When you see someone and you don’t really want to talk to them, it starts to make you sick. Eventually I think: ‘Well, I better do something about myself. I may not get to love them, but I better not let them give me an ulcer.’”


Flavell arrived on the community as a single mother with two young children. She had been a cabaret dancer, including a stint with the Moulin Rouge in Paris, but decided to radically simplify her life. She raised her children on the property without a car, avoiding machines wherever possible.


“I laugh now, when I look back,” she said. “I thought I would come here and learn from these much more evolved beings, but they were just like us. We’re just a bunch of people who are trying to figure something out. I still have things to learn.”


Later in the afternoon, Kai arrived home after teaching a samba drumming class to school kids in another town. He has the broad shoulders of someone who’s grown up on the land but, until recently, little of the practical know-how. (“I’m terribly scared of snakes,” he confided.) He and Rose, like Flavell, both hail from cities.


“I’m reaping the benefits of the work other people have put into the community, and it’s been a blessing,” he said. “The relationships are more complicated – I’m still getting used to the protocols. If you see an old fridge, you can’t just throw it out. It takes a long time to get anything done.”

The couple are clear about the obstacles associated with life this far from the mainstream, be they snakes and ticks, car-reliance or disputes with ex-members. Even so, their choice makes sense.


“If you look around the world and throughout history, I think people have lived like this most of the time,” Rose said. “When I travelled overseas this is how I saw people living: they pool resources and they share work, and a big part of that shared work is raising kids.”


Mali entered the room with a present for her mother: a soft, crocheted bird she had made at school. Rose murmured her approval by clucking like a chook, but the child protested. “Oh, it’s a bluebird,” Rose said. “It just looks a bit like a hen.” Unfussed, Mali raced off again, after asking permission to go to the common house with another child.


“All the faces around here, I know them all, and they’re my friends,” Rose continued. “I hope to spend many years together raising our kids and doing that all in a beautiful environment, with mountains in the background and a river flowing in front. I can’t ask for more than that.”

 

DIY community


IF you want to start an intentional community, don’t be naive: expect conflict and learn how to get over it. That’s the advice from Dr Bill Metcalf, gleaned from decades researching and living on communities.


“None of them run smoothly,” says Metcalf. “And the vast majority of people who want to create a community never succeed.”


The flip side, however, is that at their best, communities are socially enriching, environmentally sound and cheap to live on. “Almost invariably, people who grow up in intentional communities say they had a wonderful childhood.”


There are some practical challenges. Wedged by strict council regulations and steep property prices, people often have trouble finding suitable land. Also, properties classed as multiple occupancies usually can’t be subdivided, and without the security of individual title, banks take a lot of convincing to approve loans. Increasingly, would-be communities opt for strata title, rather than a cooperative, corporation or tenants-in-common structure.


“The old model, where a few hippies would pool their dole cheques and put illegal shacks on a clapped out dairy farm – those days are well and truly gone,” says Metcalf. “Now it requires elaborate financial management. It can cost millions of dollars by the time you get something operating with roads and facilities.”


Rural communities aren’t the only option. Phil Bourne, from Cohousing Australia, is promoting an urban hybrid model, called cohousing, in which about 15 to 30 homes are clustered around a common house and open space.


The individual dwellings are private and self-contained, not communal, but the residents pool some resources. The common house might include a shared guest room, kitchen, laundry and shed.

The concept began in Denmark in the 1970s and has become popular in Europe and North America. There are about half a dozen cohousing communities in Australian cities already, and several more in planning.


“Cohousing has a lot of appeal for current generations because you maintain personal equity and autonomy,” Bourne says. “And you don’t have to move out to the country. It’s an option for medium density urban living that still has the room for chooks and a veggie garden.”

 

Published in The Big Issue, with photographs by Conor Ashleigh.

For further information, go to abc.net.au/rn/utopias

Compost bays

In Blog on

THE Urban Bush-Carpenters have been on assignment at the Merri Corner Community Garden. We were commissioned to build three sturdy compost bays, and we did it with style. I think they’d survive a cyclone – which may be just as well, given Melbourne’s recent tropical weather.

The bays have hardwood frames, fortified with sleepers at the base. We used tin for the cladding, the dividers and the top of the hinging lids.

The lids particularly pleased UBC stalwart Ste Hiley, otherwise known as Tall English Stephen.

Ste and the lids

To build them, we drilled holes through the rear posts, large enough so that the coach bolts would fit through loosely, then screw tightly into the lid cross piece, one at each end. As a result, the lids are sturdy and rotate freely.

“These bolt hinges are our P.O.D.” Ste enthused one morning, and then had to explain to me that P.O.D. stood for Point Of Difference. “I’ve told everyone about them.”

“Who’ve you told?”

“Well, no one really. But they’re amazing.”

It’s true: they are nifty. Also nifty is the size of the bays. They’re a bit larger than one square metre, which is the golden mean for hot composting.

Inside our bays, the community gardeners will be able to make piles that generate enough heat in the middle to cook an egg. The heat rapidly breaks down the organic matter and kills off weed seeds and pathogens. If the folk at Merri Corner remember to turn the piles regularly, they could have rich, sweet smelling compost in as little as a few weeks.

Crouching UBC

Build it back green

In Greener Homes on

After the bushfires, many people are opting to re-build sustainably.

ANTHONY Smith’s Kinglake home burned down in the Black Saturday fires. “I heard the fire coming,” he says, “and it sounded like hundreds of helicopters droning together in the near distance.

“Once the house started to shake and vibrate with the noise, I thought: ‘I’m out of here’.”

He left, but the home he’d lived in for 24 years was reduced to a few charred stumps. When he set about rebuilding, he decided to do it differently: he wanted a passive solar design, one that would need little power and incur few bills. The home is still under construction, but based on the plans, it will achieve a 9-star energy rating.

Mr Smith is one of a number of residents in the area who are sharing their stories on the Build It Back Green website, coordinated by Green Cross Australia.

Mara Bún, CEO of Green Cross Australia, says personal experiences such as these can propel a wave of change, and not only among those rebuilding from the fires.

“The Black Saturday bushfires captured the hearts and minds of Australians in a deep way, and so we think these stories will inspire people to make changes in their own lives,” she says. “The information on the website about green building is very practical and applicable to everyone in the state.”

The Build It Back Green movement began in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2006. “Now it’s happening all around the world where natural disasters occur and communities want to recover in a sustainable and resilient way,” Ms Bún says.

“The way we rebuild can either refuel the cycle by being very emissions intensive, or it can begin to break the cycle altogether.”

She says the website is a hub of information on low cost, sustainable and resilient building. It includes a guide developed by the Alternative Technology Association, containing tips on green materials and building techniques, together with lists of products and suppliers.

The website also features videos and profiles of people rebuilding from the fires, and details of local events.

“We’re really stressing community participation,” Ms Bún says. “Getting to know your neighbours is a hugely important factor as we confront these threats, especially in Victoria, which has so much risk from climate change.”

Mr Smith, a woodcutter and sawmiller, took time completing the design for his new home. He observed the sun’s path throughout the year before staking the orientation along an east-west axis, with a slight twist towards the sun on winter afternoons. “Kinglake is pretty cold, so I wanted to get maximum sun on the windows during the cooler months,” he says.

He sketched out a three-bedroom house just over 6 metres wide and 28 metres long. “It’s narrow, with a low pitching height,” he says, “so the rooms are very manageable sizes for the sun to warm up.”

The post-and-beam dwelling will have Hebel (Autoclaved Aerated Concrete) block walls and insulated slab floor, with stone paving to provide thermal mass near the north facing, double-glazed windows.

Mr Smith is also using recycled materials wherever he can, including reclaimed timber and bricks from a neighbour’s demolished home. “I felled trees on my block and milled the structural timbers,” he says, “so I’ll have my own floorboards and timber for the roof.”

Beekeeping

In Greener Homes on

Hobby beekeepers create the land of food and honey.

LOUISE Davey’s backyard in Coburg is lined with well-tended vegie patches. Chooks cluck in their coop under the fig tree. But the most important residents – the queens of the food garden – live next to the olive tree in the middle of the yard.

Ms Davey has been an amateur apiarist for two years. “I just love watching the bees and getting the honey,” she says. “The people who live around my area love getting it too. I’m keeping quite a few families in honey from my two hives.”

Her bounty, now about 60 kilograms a year, has grown with each harvest. “Because I’m in the suburbs, the honey tastes slightly different every time. It reflects the plants the bees collected the nectar and pollen from,” she says.

There are about 2200 beekeepers registered with the Victorian Department of Primary Industries and around 1800 of those are hobbyists, according to apiary inspector Daniel Martin.

Although each local council has its own bylaws, backyard beekeepers are usually allowed to keep one or two hives, under the state’s Apiary Code of Practice. It is compulsory, however, to register with the department ($15 per year). “Bees are classed as livestock,” Mr Martin says. “Registered beekeepers have access to a honey testing program to help with early detection of an endemic honeybee brood disease.”

He says beekeeping is not only a way to source your own sweet bliss, but also provides an important ecosystem service. “Many people don’t realise that one in every three mouthfuls of food is dependent on honeybee pollination. By keeping bees you’re contributing to your neighbourhood’s food production.”

If you do it well, it’s also good for the bees. “Suburban hives are often really strong because they’re stationary and they’ve got access to nectar and pollen all year round,” Mr Martin says. “Many commercially run hives are migrated around the country and the bees often need supplementary feeding for extra nutrition.”

The DPI website has a series of useful how-to guides on beekeeping and safe management practices.

Beehives must be set back from your fence and should be placed in a sunny, sheltered spot with access to water. It’s best if they don’t face directly towards the street – the bees’ flight path must not cross low over the footpath. As a beekeeper, you’ll need safety equipment, including light-coloured clothing, gloves, a veil, a hive tool and a smoker to distract the bees while you harvest the honey.

Mr Martin says that if you care for your bees responsibly, they’ll happily go about their own beesness.

“Bees are like every animal – if they’re neglected they become unhappy,” he says. “Beekeeping isn’t a skill that comes overnight, so I highly recommend joining or liaising with a local beekeeping club.”

Ms Davey honed her skills with the beekeepers at Collingwood Children’s Farm and CERES in Brunswick. She suggests that newcomers get hands-on experience before they strike out on their own.

“Although bees are fairly low maintenance, it’s a little daunting the first time you open up your hives and you’ve got hundreds of bees flying all around you,” she says.

While she’s suffered her “fair share” of stings, they usually come when a bee inadvertently falls into her slippers. “Bees aren’t aggressive – they’ll only sting if they think they’re being mistreated.”

Good folk

In Blog on

WHILE I was on the Sunshine Coast, I attended a bamboo-building workshop. Actually, it was more of a tea-drinking workshop, with occasional breaks in which we dabbled with bamboo.

The workshop was hosted by Tim and Kate, who run a café called Chocolate Jungle at the Woodford Folk Festival. There, from within a huge structure concocted of bamboo and tarps, they serve chocolaty organic treats to all comers at all hours.

This year, they wanted a trial run, in the hope that construction would go more smoothly at the festival. I’d arranged to meet Kate in Nambour. As we drove to the workshop, she laughed often and told many tales – ukulele-playing, festival-going, caravan-living tales.

We arrived at a bamboo grove in Cooran, where there were about 60 kinds of bamboo, some growing as tall as 30 metres; others short and fine, with gently spreading leaves like fairy’s wings. When the wind blew, the clumps clicked and clacked as though they could collapse at any moment.

But bamboo is strong and flexible: a few years ago, when I visited Hong Kong, I was astonished to see modern skyscrapers enveloped in bamboo scaffolding. Another reason it’s a good building material is that it grows quickly, some varieties 60 centimetres a day, under the right conditions. In two years, a pole can be strong enough to use in a temporary structure.

Our building, however, grew slowly. Tim is a dreamer, tall, tanned and lean: with a faraway look in his eye he’ll conjure a glorious second storey, not noticing the first is lacking its corner posts. After four days, although the structure was far from complete, it had taken shape in Tim’s mind; and in any case, we’d all enjoyed ourselves tremendously.

After the workshop, I set a southerly course and happened to hitch through Woodford. I got a lift from two women, Danielle and Kassandra, who were volunteers with the folk festival’s art department. They took me to their shed, where they were assembling giant decorative flowers. They’ve been volunteering once a week all year, and will shortly begin a six week full-time stint. They assured me that Woodford is less a festival and more a way of life.

Later that day, a funeral director called James drove me from Toowoomba to Warwick. He dropped me at O’Mahoney’s Hotel, next to the railway station, for a cheap room.

One of my resolutions on this trip was to stay in old country pubs. At O’Mahoney’s I found just what I was looking for: high ceilings, rambling hallways and a broad verandah. The hotel was built in 1887; now, trains rarely stop and the main street has long since migrated east. On the first night, the owners, Joan and Glen, invited me to eat with them. I stayed a second day.

Every Wednesday evening, the Warwick folk circle meets in the Ladies Room of the hotel. In turn, the members play a song or recite a poem, both originals and covers. It was the day before Remembrance Day, and one man sung Eric Bogle’s anti-war ballad No Man’s Land. I remember my dad listening to that song when I was a kid.

In many ways, it was an unremarkable scene. They seemed like ordinary townsfolk – tradies and salespeople; café owners and teachers; parents and children – yet, here they were, exercising the greatest gift. I found their songs deeply moving, the more so for the fact they were playing together.

When I hear simple singing like that I seem to lose track of everything I think I know; or, at least, it disappears for a while, and comes back gleaming, like a vintage car that’s had a cut and polish. I think I’ll take up the ukulele – one way or another, it’ll make people cry.

O'Mahoney's