When not fiddling around on boats we live on the east Australia coast. Its a beautiful place, forested hills and mountains dropping down to sandy beaches interspersed with sections of rocky headland and cliffs.
The coastal hills are largely covered in eucalyptus forest. The original trees are well over 2-3 hundred years old.
We built the house about 30 years ago out of mud from on the site and timber salvaged from trees knocked down for roadworks, housing estates and so on.
Australian’s have a very cavalier attitude towards trees that were already old when the first Europeans stumbled on the continent.
Technology and human ingenuity is great, but it makes sense to use of whats locally available where possible. Australian hardwoods are the best in the world in my completely biased opinion.
Note the solar panels – the house electricity comes from solar power. We will have some of these on the boat.
- Our mud brick home in the Australian bush
Inside the house the walls have been rendered with cement and painted with acrylic. The doors are hand made from local timbers. Note the colors of the wood. The red is wooley butt (Eucalyptus longifolia) , the yellow is stringy bark (Eucalyptus globoidea) and ash (Eucalyptus seberei).
Construction of the roof, thats 12v LED lighting
This young magpie sat on the log outside the front door and warbled beautifully for about half an hour one sunny morning – I think he (she ?) was showing off.
Magpie