The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

I came across a copy of "Introduction to Permaculture" by Bill Mollison back in 1994 and haven't looked back. After this time I started getting concerned about our food chain, because I realised that the fruit that I was purchasing from the market in Melbourne had little to no taste. From there I began growing my own fruit trees and seeking out specialist orchardists who really cared about their fruit.

Well, 300+ diverse fruit trees, 12 chooks, 12 raised no dig vegetable, herbs and experiments with hugelkultur beds later, I find myself up in the cool temperate environment of the Macedon Ranges in Victoria.

The house I live in is disconnected from all services other than road maintenance by the council. There is no garbage pickup, no drainage, no water, no sewerage, no power. All the infrastructure that people take for granted, I have had to supply.

• Power is through off grid solar which I sourced the parts for and wired up myself
• Drain water is collected in drains and distributed through pipes into the orchard and swales
• Water is collected from the roof and stored in above ground tanks. The soil is too well drained to maintain a dam
• Sewerage is processed in a worm farm which requires no energy or desludging and the resulting worm tea and vermicast is distributed into an area set aside for the benfit of the native animals who graze in the orchard
• All organic garbage is disposed of through the worm farm. All other recyclable materials are deposited in the recycled materials bay at the local waste transfer station. Only a small amount of plastic is collected and disposed of.

I built the house myself too (yes, I'm very fond of all 60,000+ nails!).

The Macedon Ranges is also in a very high bushfire risk area so the house has many mostly passive and some active methods of protection against this scenario. It has been constructed to the highest required standard of the new bushfire building standard AS3959-2009 and I am willing to take questions in relation to this.

There's allways something going on here, so if there is any demand for it (ie. people join), I'll post updates.

Regards.