michael – Page 29

Many hands make light earth

In Blog on October 12, 2011

LAST week I visited The Plummery, my friend Kat Lavers’ urban permaculture demonstration home. I’d received an email from her, addressed to undisclosed recipients, with a subject line that read, “Come and get mudddddy with me!”

That’s five d’s. That’s a lot of mud. Here’s Kat, when I arrived:

She’s re-building the shed at the back of her yard using a technique called light earth or clay light earth. The basic idea is to pack out the timber frame of a building with a mix of straw and clay.

First, you make a sloppy clay slip (a bucket of mud). Kat had gathered clods of Northcote clay from her backyard when she dug out a small pond. We carefully dissolved the lumps in water and strained it to remove the rocks.

Next, we added straw and jumbled it until the clay wouldn’t run through your fingers when you clutched a handful of the mix. Left overnight, the clay-straw blend turns malleable like putty.

As a building material, the walls provide more insulation than mud-brick, because of the air trapped in and around the straw. For the same reason, however, it offers less thermal mass – the walls themselves don’t retain warmth or coolth for as long. In this case, the method suited the location and design of the shed, which receives little sun on its northern wall and windows.

Kat had prepared some of the mix the day before, so we tried our hands at packing a wall, once she’d screwed the formwork in place. Here’s a section that Kat had completed a week earlier:

“It’s a little bit alarming when your walls start sprouting,” she said, as she pointed out the green shoots. “But I’ve been assured it’s ok.”

It’s better than ok. Solo, light earth building is slow going, but together, it’s a lark. About half a dozen friends popped in to help. When Kat explained that the method has been used for about 400 years in Europe, we all imagined the way villagers would have gathered to assemble each other’s walls. Shortly after, in another time-honoured tradition, our host cooked us a delicious lunch.

The next stage of the building will be the rendering. Kat is planning a lime, sand and clay external render, and an earth plaster on the inside. The studio won’t just be functional; it will be beautiful.

And all this got my brain sprouting. Kat had told me that in the course of her building research, she found there’s no need for a permit for structures that have less than 10 square metres of floor space.

I’ve been thinking about a recent Radio National show on tiny homes, and my rent, and about how housing is the largest expense everyone incurs. And also, about how we pay for it by exchanging so much of our time – perhaps the only thing we truly have – for money. Imagine if I could reduce my housing costs significantly, by building my own shed-home? Could I put it in someone’s backyard? (Samuel Alexander from the Simplicity Collective did that for two years.)

And, then, imagine if that little building was also a beautiful, carefully designed, demountable, light earth dwelling, with a loft for sleeping and a chair for reading? I think it’s worth my daydreams.

Q&A: The Sharehood

In Community development, Environment on October 10, 2011

For the current EarthSong journal, I answered these questions about The Sharehood and why I’m a part of the volunteer collective.

How did the Sharehood begin and what does it aim to do?

The Sharehood began in 2008 when it occurred to web developer Theo Kitchener that he probably didn’t need to walk all the way to the Laundromat – there were many washing machines lying in wait much closer to his house. He just needed to know their owners. And, of course, it wasn’t just washing machines that we could share.

So, together with other volunteers, he developed The Sharehood, a social-networking website that helps neighbours share skills, things and time. When you sign up, you see the hundred members who live nearest to you, and the things they’re happy to lend and borrow. You also see a local noticeboard, where people within walking distance can post events and questions.

People can share anything: veggies, tools, books or washing machines; gardening help, bike fixing, languages or childminding. Often, neighbours get the most out of spending time together – be that at a picnic, swap party, movie night, or with a simple hello in the street.

Tell us about a Sharehood activity which was particularly satisfying.

I’m very fortunate to live in a street with a park in it. In the summer, on warm evenings, we put on free moonlight cinema screenings for all the neighbours. I promote it using the website. Usually, just before it’s scheduled to begin, I knock on doors to gather what we need: extension cords, speakers, rope and so on.

Everyone loves those evenings – they’re easy, free and open to all comers. The movie screenings bring the street to life. They also feel a little wicked in a good way, because we’re gently breaking the normal rules of behaviour (and copyright and council requirements!) that keep us stuck indoors, apart from one another.

There are a number of local initiatives working towards a more sustainable future at the local level. What is it about this particular initiative that attracts you? What do you value most about it?

I particularly like The Sharehood, because to me, it gets as close as possible to the heart of the problem, and it does so in a fun, welcoming and generous way that improves people’s wellbeing. It not only challenges our pattern of over-consumption and saves money, but it brings people together. Once people get to know one another in a neighbourhood, a street begins to feel like a community: people are more likely to take an interest in their local issues and – I hope – also become more engaged citizens on a larger scale.

In Australian cities, it has become awkward to say hello to people on the street. My experience has been that most of us are thrilled to have an excuse or a reason to connect with one another – and The Sharehood helps give us the icebreaker we need.

Tell us a little about the worldview that informs your life choices.

I have a very strong sense of gratitude for the life I’ve been born into. But I recognise that my circumstances are a matter of chance. Given my good fortune, I would like not only to strive for personal contentment, but also to share that with others, in whatever way I can. To my eternal wonder, all my experiences have convinced me that these two purposes are inextricably entwined.

When you imagine life in 20 or 30 years time what do you see?

There are so many possibilities, but in one of them, The Sharehood (or something similar) has spread throughout our cities and towns, as one element of strong, engaged local communities – places where we provide for many of our needs while assisting others to do the same. I see a society where improving everyone’s quality of life is the priority, rather than improving material welfare.

How might interested readers connect to the Sharehood or similar initiatives which reduce consumption and increase local community connectedness?

The Sharehood website has all the information you need. It just takes a moment to sign on, and then you can start sharing! If you want to get your neighbours in on the act, we’ve written up a sample letter you can drop in their letterboxes, inviting them to join.

Over-consumption

In Greener Homes on October 9, 2011

The more you earn, the more you travel and shop, and the worse it is for the environment

Inner-suburbanites have bigger eco-footprints than people who live further out, despite having better access to public transport. It might sound surprising, but that’s one of the glaring results of the consumption atlas produced by the Australian Conservation Foundation.

“We found there’s a very strong relationship between wealth and environmental impact,” says Chuck Berger, from the foundation.

The reasons? Shopping and flying.

“People tend to think greenhouse pollution is mainly created by electricity use and driving, but those direct impacts add up to about one-third of our average impact on climate change,” Mr Berger says.

“The other two-thirds comes from the emissions created in producing food and the goods and services we purchase – everything from clothes and electronic goods, to furniture, flights and eating out.”

Using the consumption atlas, you can find out the environmental impact of the average person in your suburb or town, displayed by way of greenhouse emissions, water consumption or land use.

If you want to reduce your spending, you can start by signing up to Buy Nothing New Month, throughout October. It’s the second year of the campaign, which targets over-consumption by promoting alternatives such as buying second-hand, repairing old goods, renting, or taking up hobbies rather than shopping for leisure.

For his part, Mr Berger advocates sharing, whether within the household, among neighbours, or by using community facilities. “Libraries and public swimming pools are classic examples, but there are also new models such as car-share schemes which are taking off in some inner-city areas,” he says.

Dr Samuel Alexander, lecturer at University of Melbourne and founder of the Simplicity Institute, says there’s another confronting message behind the consumption atlas: regardless of the differences between suburbs, nearly all Australians are consuming more than the planet can sustain, if all humanity lived that way.

“As a culture more broadly, if we’re going to take ecological issues seriously, then almost all of us have to rethink our consumption habits – even people who are by no means wealthy,” he says.

Greener Homes voluntary simplicity from Michael Green on Vimeo.

He maintains that the answer doesn’t just lie with technology. All over the world, greenhouse emissions have continued to rise, despite the fact that many production methods have become progressively more efficient.

On the household scale, Dr Alexander says, we must be wary of a similar trap.

“You have to be very careful that the benefits of efficiency improvements aren’t redirected into commodities that have similar impacts. For example, if we save money on power bills by insulating our houses, we shouldn’t use it to buy more plane tickets, but instead, say, to buy a water tank.”

Dr Alexander is conducting an ongoing survey of people who have chosen to live more simply, adopting lower-income, lower-consumption lifestyles. So far, nine out of ten respondents say they’re happier for the change.

He says his findings are consistent with sociological research suggesting the link between consumption and wellbeing weakens once we reach a basic level of material security.

“The core philosophy of voluntary simplicity holds that it’s not about deprivation or sacrifice, but rethinking your lifestyle in a way that you consume less but you live more,” he says. “By limiting your consumption, you’re able to direct more time and energy to non-material pursuits such as time with your friends and family, creative activities and relaxation.”

Read this article at The Age online

Andamooka boomtown blues

In Community development on September 27, 2011

I wrote this in 2008, after visiting Andamooka, a remote opal-mining town in South Australia. It is about the way the big mining boom was changing the character of the kookiest place I’ve visited, anywhere in the world. The story was set to be published, but then the financial markets collapsed and the nearby BHP Billiton Olympic Dam mine expansion didn’t happen as soon as expected. Now, SA Premier Mike Rann has sworn he’ll stay in the job until its controversial environmental impacts statement is approved and the deeds are signed – probably by November. So it’s time to re-visit Andamooka:

I drive and drive. North for hours in the South Australian desert, then right at Woomera and keep going; right again at Roxby Downs and on through the red glare. Finally, I arrive at Andamooka: Mars on earth. And here, real estate is booming.

By the historic miners’ huts, the barbecue sizzles. It’s Sunday lunchtime, the sky is blue, as always, and the Andamooka Progress and Opal Miners’ Association (APOMA) is holding its annual membership drive. The secretary apologises as she asks for $5 to cover my meal, as a non-member.

Ted Jones, the town’s oldest resident, is over at the picnic tables. The 93-year-old has a crinkly mouth like a turtle and broad strong hands. “I can still work a bloody pick and shovel and handle sixty-pound rocks,” he says, proudly. He’s been building a retaining wall in his backyard, with the help of his son-in-law. “You’d never find another place like Andamooka. That’s what I always tell people.”

He’s right. Homes jumble in among the tailings from the mines – mounds of dug earth like giant white anthills in the red sand. Coober Pedy, hundreds of kilometres north-west, is Australia’s famous, eccentric opal mining town, but from my table at the barbecue, I get the feeling that Andamooka matches it. About 800 people live here, in corrugated iron sheds, ramshackle weatherboards, rusting caravans and old buses. Car wrecks and corroded trucks fill vacant blocks.

“We were in the habit of doing what we wanted to do and then arguing the point about it afterwards,” says Ted, explaining the haphazard layout. “That’s the way we’ve always lived here and that’s why we don’t want it to change.”

The town has no council and no rates. No sewerage system. Neither water pipes nor street lights. The last police officer left a year ago and has only just been replaced. Only two roads are sealed – the way in and out, and the route to the nurses’ clinic. APOMA volunteers manage services as best they can on an annual budget of about $80,000, partly funded by the South Australian government.

The roads are still unnamed, but not for much longer. It’s a sign of the times: bureaucrats down south are forcing the recalcitrant locals to name their hundred or more streets and dead ends. Until now, although everyone’s address read ‘Government Road’, Andamooka has surely been among the least governed communities in the country.

In 1930, two boundary riders, Sam Brookes and Ray Sheppard, found opal at Treloar’s Hill, on Andamooka Station, a pastoral lease south of Lake Eyre. They tried to keep it quiet, but word slipped out and fortune seekers struck in.

It was a mining settlement, not a town; there were few rules. Newcomers pegged their claim and lived on it. They lived rough. “Several people got shot. Everybody had a revolver, and a rifle,” says Ted, a smile wrinkling from the right side of his mouth. “We only had the warden, we didn’t have any police.” Some men excavated their own “dugout” houses in the low hills to keep cooler in the blazing summers. There were no sealed roads north of Port Augusta, 300 kilometres away, so after every heavy rain the miners were marooned. Despite the distance, by the ’60s the opal boom was on and Andamooka was roaring.

I take my plate up for seconds. Bev Burge, with thin red hair, pink lips and pushed-up tracksuit sleeves, busies herself serving the food. Burgers, onion, gristly steaks and fat sausages are laid out on one trestle table; bread, coleslaw and potato salad on the other. Bev moved here in 1971. “When I first came up, [I saw] everyone had their washing out and it was dry in an hour. We were in Melbourne and it wouldn’t dry for days. And that tempted me.”

Bev ran Opal Air, the airline that flew daily during the boom years. She mined for over three decades and now she runs the bingo. Later, she tells me about the town’s old characters like Aggie Biro, whose car only drove in reverse: “Everyone just stayed clear if Aggie was on the road.” And Gelignite Jack, who walked along the creek bed at night, drunk, sparking and throwing explosive: “The first time it happened it went off right near my bedroom.”

She tells me about the old drive-in, which had open-air speakers: “The whole town could hear all the movies. Every night you’d hear trains and shooting and cowboys and Indians fighting all through the town.” Then she tells me about the gunfight in the Tuckabox, a local bar: “The Serbs were at one end and the Croats the other, and they had guns and they had the tables tipped up and they were shootin’ at each other.” She sighs and laughs. “We really loved those years.”

Locals say the population got as high as 4500, a mash of European immigrants escaping war and state tyranny. Opal miners and buyers found big money and lost it again with legendary excess. No one, of course, paid tax. “The whole lifestyle was gambling,” Bev says. “It was one big gamble.”

In the late ’70s, traces of the rainbow gem slowed and so did the town. In 1980, the year television arrived, Opal Air stopped coming. “All those years they kept saying the town’d finish one day. But it never did,” says Bev.

Judging by the barbecue though, I wonder if the end is nigh. APOMA had catered for 200, but after two hours the two-dozen comers have dwindled to single figures and a cold breeze has wrested control from the retreating sun. Bev has left her post and a stray dog barks at the remaining sausages.

Association president Peter Allen, clad in khaki and sitting alone on the low wall near the dugout huts, offers two explanations. First, is a scheduling clash: every Sunday afternoon, the Opal Hotel runs a popular poker tournament. That’s where Bev went and about 30 others with her – no surprise really, in this town. Second, is BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine.

In the mid-’80s, while opal rarely surfaced in Andamooka, Western Mining Corporation began trucking copper, uranium, gold and silver from an enormous ore-body not far to the west. With the South Australian government, the company fabricated the Roxby Downs township – a suburb-island in the burnt sand – to service the mine. Many Andamookians also found jobs there and commuted. It was good for the old town.

Olympic Dam expanded in 2000 and, now owned by BHP Billiton, is set to expand again – at its peak, the open cut could be the size of the Adelaide CBD and parklands. They’ll need a lot of workers. Even now, before the expansion, Roxby Downs real estate is scarce and steep.

Miners are once again moving to Andamooka in spades. But with 12-hour shifts and continuous production, the big mine doesn’t schedule for community spirit. The old timers complain to me that they don’t see the new townsfolk: if they’re not at work, they’re at home in bed.

Allen, a charismatic ten-pound Pom and ex-crocodile farmer, is wrestling with change. He wagers that the population will burst to 2000 within two years. Shacks worth $20,000 four years ago can fetch $200,000. A 62-apartment eco-village is under development. In two days, new owners will take over the Opal Hotel and will begin construction to double its capacity by mid next year.

Fresh water is in short supply. The tip, on a hill just out of town, has no fence and the rubbish pile is spreading. Ever more sewerage seeps into the natural watercourse. Allen is riled: “What we’ve been saying to government is, ‘If you want to have your two-bobs’ now with building rules and all the bullshit – all right. But give us some infrastructure.’”

The big mine is bringing jobs and money to Andamooka. It’s bringing progress, order and rules. More people will come and, eventually, the infrastructure, but then the old opal miners will leave. Many already have, striking high prices for their land.

“Even with the big influx of people from more civilised environments, I would like to think they will be incorporated into the community,” Allen says then breaks into a knowing smile. “And relax.”

Few holidaymakers stay in Andamooka and the locals are still generous. Someone offers me a free bed for a few nights in an old bus. It’s that sort of town. APOMA lets passers-by camp on its grounds for $2 per night. I leave the barbecue and walk on the abandoned opal fields towards the great white cross on the horizon, where, my new host says, a drunk man died years ago. He had fought with friends, fled their car and set out for home across the fields. In the dark, he plunged down a shaft.

Allen and a handful of flannel-clad drinkers linger all afternoon, arguing over town politics. The leftover meat and salads are stowed in the bottle shop fridge. At sundown, the stayers adjourn to the Opal Hotel. Tonight, before the pub changes hands, the long-time owner will shout the drinks.

The great chicken coup

In Blog on September 23, 2011

GEOFF, the Urban Bush-Carpenters’ spiritual leader, was absent from our fourth workshop last week. He is an engineer. I am not. Whenever I suggest something that won’t work, Geoff pauses a while and hesitantly says this: “Ah, well, ah, you could do it that way…” and then trails off into silence, before politely suggesting an alternative that won’t fall down. He can be frustrating that way.

In fact, Geoff says this so often that the rest of us have begun repeating it to each other, just for fun.

With that in mind, you may be surprised to read that while the big, bearded cat was away, the mice decided to build a large A-frame chook house. None of us had built one before. But hey, our workshops are free, so it would be churlish for attendees to complain. In any case, I was supremely confident. As I’ve found out, everything just seems to work out well for the UBC.

Before we split into three groups to work on the A-frames, the floor and the door, we had to decide on the dimensions of the whole. The various pieces would change greatly depending on our desired width and length, and the height of the floor. Everyone took part in a robust discussion as we considered the timber available, the ease of cleaning, the chooks’ need for roosting space and the ergonomics of the door.

It was a slow start. As we neared 2 pm, our nominal finishing time, the chook house looked like this:

If it were a challenge on a reality TV show, the producers would have been blessed with many opportunities to emphasise uncertainty and delay. If they were honest, however, they’d have revealed the fascinating and fruitful process of cooperation instead.

Here, I have an admission: despite our catch-cry celebrating irregularity (“close enough is good enough”), tape measures were used in the making of this chook house. We measured the lengths between diagonal corners on each of the sides, and the door. It’s a handy technique, because when the two measurements match, you know the frame is square, not skewed.

When finally the chook house was complete, Bobbi, one of the attendees, said: “It’s wonderful to realize that you can just go ahead and do anything!” Indeed. Even when Geoff isn’t around to check it won’t collapse. It was thrilling to see the pile of salvaged timber and tin turn into a sturdy hen home in just a few hours.

Another participant, Nick Ray from the Ethical Consumer Group, observed that while each of us would have done it differently had we made it by ourselves, the final product was very likely an improvement, courtesy of our combined problem solving skills. “The best thing is the collaboration,” he said.