Who are we and what are we doing?

Daunting, seeing that heading… What do I want to put up here about us? And what prompts me to want a page called ‘about us’?

Probably wanting to have a page in tribute to our beloved Kai (one of our Burmese cats), who recently died suddenly due to acute renal failure. I wanted to create a page called ‘Our little soldier‘ and have a collection of photos of Kai and a note about how much we miss him, but I didn’t have a page in this website to hang it off…

So, what about us…? We are Richard and Myrine. We have owned our 10-hectare bush property since September 2004 and have slowly (painfully slowly sometimes) been creating our dream: a self-sufficient, close to carbon neutral, minimal footprint, thermally efficient, solar-powered life in the Victorian bush.

You can check out all the other pages on the project and our life on the block so far…

I work for a local council, in the communications unit, writing and editing, managing and developing web content, and managing council’s corporate image, in a small team with a great manager (you know who you are). Richard is working full time on our project and driving the Night Rider bus one or two nights on the weekends (in his spare time!). It means he sleeps most of Saturday and Sunday mornings, but at least it helps with the cash flow.

We decided to build in straw bales for a number of reasons. Firstly, creating solid 500mm thick walls (including 50mm of mud and lime render inside and out) will provide us with amazing insulation. Add to this, double-glazed windows, fully insulated roof and floor, and passive solar orientation and design, and we hope our house will stay between about 18 and 26 degrees all year round with little heating and no mechanical cooling.

And secondly, straw is the ‘by-product’ of grain growing; the stems of the plant that get left behind at harvest time. This is often disposed of by burning, so by re-using this by-product we are reducing the amount of straw that gets burnt, and thus reducing that contribution to carbon in the atmosphere. We have been very lucky to get the ‘best bales this side of the black stump’ from Rodd Rathjen. If you are building in straw bales, we recommend contacting Rodd, his bales are not only clean (very little dust, seed or chaff), they are also extremely well-packed and consistently tight.

We first got to thinking about using bales after a straw bale house tour we took as part of Solar House Day in 2005. We followed up with a visit to the Chocolate Mill (Mount Franklin) and a short stay at Millduck Bed and Breakfast (Harcourt). Plus, talking with our neighbours who were also contemplating straw bale construction, and Richard participating in a couple of straw bale workshops, and before we knew it we were hooked!

So thirdly, the extraordinary beauty of mud-rendered bale walls; the acoustic properties (providing peaceful, grounded living all year round), the tactile nature of the walls (we feel like hugging our shedudio walls every day!), and natural walls that breath (no paints or chemicals in our world).

Our journey towards being carbon neutral is assisted massively by our Trust for Nature covenant. We have covenanted 9.5 hectares of native bush, which absorbs about 28 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. This covenant is in perpetuity – the bush will be retained in its current state beyond our lifetimes.

Not sure how to calculate our personal greenhouse gas emissions, but with our electricity is almost all solar and our heating and cooling at a minimum, solar hot water, and a hybrid car (plus more green fleet points than I need to cover it, hence half covering Richard’s car as well), we’d like to think we are well on the way on our journey to being carbon neutral, if not carbon negative!

Down the track we will grow our own fruit and veggies, raise chooks for eggs and possibly produce fish, and retain our food surplus by preserving and drying; contributing to a significant reduction in food miles as well.

Top