Australian Bush Life

One way that I have found that I am able to reduce the waste I generate is to keep some key items in my handbag so that I can avoid having to make more waste! I think these few items must save me kilograms of waste being generated and going to landfill each year.

The items might appear big and cumbersome, but really aren’t. Each time I have what I need it feels so good to not have to get the waste too! I suggest to try it out and see.

Sustainable Handbag items. Carry bags, plastic water bottle, and "Keep Cup" for coffees.

1. Re-usable bags. Each time I have to buy anything, mainly supermarket shopping, I am able to avoid getting plastic bags. I haven’t actually had to accept a plastic bag for a number of years now.
2. Carry a small plastic (light weight) water bottle for re-filling. I actually leave this 350ml water bottle in my handbag empty most of the time so it’s not heavy. I am then easily able to fill it using water from the tap at public places whenever I actually need it. I never buy bottled water a complete waste of money and also a huge environmental cost for something completely unnecessary. click here for story of bottled water
3. My “Keep Cup” has meant that if I want a take-away coffee I don’t have to have the waste that comes with it. This cup writes off it’s environmental production after just 18 uses. I am already well past that and can happily enjoy waste free cuppas from now on.

Batteries are a major part of modern day electronic waste and hence we all have the opportunity to make a difference by choosing to use rechargeable batteries and not single use batteries thereby greatly reducing the amount of toxic waste entering our waste & landfill systems. Batteries generally contain heavy metals such as lead, mercury, lithium and cadmium and if not disposed of properly can end up leaking into our environment causing great harm to our natural environment.

The “eneloop” rechargeable batteries come pre-charged as they have a good storage life and can hold their charge for long periods of time. They are extremely good for camera use.

As part of a recent recent trial of BirdWatchCam I chose to use “eneloop” rechargeable batteries. As this camera was used as part of an endangered species recovery project on Helmeted Honeyeaters, it would not have been suitable to use wasteful, single use – disposable batteries thereby increasing our environmental problems. The BirdWatchCam used 4 x AA size batteries. For the duration of the trial 2 sets of 4 batteries were used. They were light and easy to carry out into the field (study site) and swap with the existing batteries.

 The “eneloop” rechargeable batteries met all needs (even performing for long periods) and were easy to re-charge and much more environmentally friendly than longer lasting but more harmful to the environment single use (Lithium) batteries.

Dog sitting without owning a pet.

We have chosen to live in the Australian Bush to enjoy the local wildlife and all it can offer.

We would consider to own farm animals to assist us with food production such as chickens or other poultry. Hey and we also consider our worms from our worm farm as pets – are we mad?!?

We would never own a cat as we both know how much damage cats have wreaked on biodiversity in Australia. Owning a cat is just something we could not morally do.

We know that we may be seen as “different” as owning a pet is so mainstream in Australia, but we hope to highlight some of the benefits of not owning a pet cat or dog.

• Saves money – no vet bills or pet food bills
• Reduces our carbon footprint by avoiding buying pet food (particularly meat)
• Can holiday anytime and anywhere (including National Parks)
• Don’t need to build or maintain fencing
• Don’t feel guilty about not looking after them (during long work days) or not walking them
• No pet hairs or smells all over our clothes and furniture
• No barking, which actually can really destroy peace & quiet!
• No doggy (or cat) poo to pick up and manage
• Our local wildlife are more likely to be around when no pets are present

Sadie helping with garlic brading - not!

Another option we have found that fills this “pet” niche is that we often “doggy sit” a couple of local dogs for short periods. This is a fun option and more like a holiday when we look after them.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu is such a fantastic musician. We really like to listen to his music to get more in touch with nature (country). He sings in his local language and it makes you feel more connected. Although we can’t understand his language it is so beautiful to hear songs being sung in an aboriginal language as this is very rarely done. A highly recommended album one of our favorites!

To reduce our energy use and personal carbon emmisions we never dry our clothes using electricity. From spring to autumn on non-rainy days we can usually manage to dry our clothes on our outdoor washing line using natural sunlight energy. But during winter we dry all our clothes indoors. We have found the best and most simple tool to help us with this is a ceiling clothes drying rack.

Sustainable - ceiling clothes drying rack.

This rack uses a pulley system to pull the clothes rack up to the ceiling. In our home we have quite a high ceiling peak and even with long pants hanging down we can still walk underneath the clothes, so they don’t take up any floor space like other drying racks.

As we heat our home using sustainable harvesting of wood for home heating we believe this clothes drying technique to be completely sustainable. The air up at the ceiling where the clothes are drying is also a few degrees higher than at floor level so is really efficient at drying clothes.

We only use our wood fire for heating our house. As our home is under trees we wrestled with the concept of solar/thermal energy for heating but we do not receive enough direct sunlight to achieve this. We did not feel that it was sustainable to cut down our bush to gain access to sunlight. As the reason we had chosen this house initially was because of the bush (trees) and the beautiful wildlife biodiversity it provides. Cutting this exact bush down did not provide us with the moral answer. Also living under the trees also provides us with much desired shade in summer.

Firewood collection - sustainably.

Instead we manage and source all our firewood from our bush block in a sustainable manner. We feel that this is probably the most sustainable heating fuel option as it is truely a fuel that can provide a current and renewable energy source. Fossil based fuels source energy which is millions of years old, but the energy in the trees we use for fuel has been generated in less than 100 years and can be recycled within or lifetime.

After ensuring that our need to heat is as low as possible by improving insulation and reducing drafts within the home some concepts we consider to improve the sustainability of this home heating option are:

• Use trees that are already dead, but we don’t take every dead tree.
• Ensure that dead trees with good hollows are left as habitat.
• Leave some dead trees on the ground as logs to rot and provide habitat and nutrients to the forest.
• Only burn wood that has been thoroughly dried – no green wood.
• Protect and manage our bush habitat by reducing weeds and ensuring regeneration for future use.
• Planting indigenous trees as required in un-treed areas for future use and as habitat improvements.

Harvesting wood can be a sustainable product for human consumption such as heating, but this does not endorse some of the harvesting practices that are used in native forests around where we live. But the logging of native forests debate is a whole other issue for another blog post!

Wood fired heater for stove top cooking.

To save on gas during winter we cook most of our meals on our wood fired heater, so we are heating our home and cooking our food all in one. It is a great way to keep energy bills down and save on fossil fuels. Reducing our impact on climate change.

We can cook any meal just as we would on a gas stove top. The wood fired stove can be managed to be hotter or cooler by allowing more or less air flow into the system to burn the wood. It is absolutely fantastic for putting a soup on in the morning and letting it slowly cook away for lunch on those really cold days.

Smoked Trout stock.

Not only do we cook regular meals using our wood heater but we also take the time to prepare additional ingredients particularly those which take a lot of cooking time. For instance we always re-use any bones or fish carcasses, like the local smoked trout that we buy.  We cook them up in water with some herbs or vegetables (even parts of vegetable plants we don’t eat are great flavoring for stock) pulled out from our vegetable garden to prepare stocks. We then store in re-usable containers and keep in the fridge for later use.

We also take advantage of this free energy and always keep a pot full of water on the wood fire stove top to have hot water on tap for tea / coffee or cleaning up, particularly doing the dishes.

We empty and tidy our worm farm about every 3 – 4 months. We use the soil from the bottom trays in our vegetable garden which turns into a thick, dark and nutrient rich humus from all the scrap vegetable matter we added over the previous months. It is best and most easily added when we are busily planting out seeds or seedlings as we just shovel a small amount into the hole as we plant, straight where the vegetables are going to need it.

Worm Farm. Bottled worm juice fertiliser can be stored for months.

At the same time when we clean out out worm farm we tend to end up with a lot of worm juice collected in the bottom which is a watery tea colored mixture containing all the nutrients that have come out of the vegetable matter as the worms eat their way through it. This is great as a plant fertiliser. Although it is very strong and best diluted about 1:10 with water or until a light tea colour before applying to the growing vegetables.

We also store the worm juice fertiliser as we don’t need it all immediately and it keeps for a few months in bottles. We can then fertilise our vegetables every week or two easily. Many people regularly tap the worm juice from the bottom of the farm (there is a tap) and use it as they go, but we put a big effort in every 3 to 4 months and then pretty much leave the worm farm to do it’s own thing the rest of the time.

The humus component from the worm farm is great for adding microbes to the soil in the vegie patch, making sure that our soil is full of microspcopic life (as well as larger bugs and animals like worms). Humus also adds nutrients and the microbes create air holes (ensuring un-compacted soil) which all help to keep our vegetable patch soil healthy and nutrient rich to ensure we can grow as many vegetables as possible.

Worm farms are fantastic for providing organic fertiliser and avoiding the use of nasty chemicals. Also using all our vegetable scraps and stopping them going into landfill where they would just be a waste product and not used as the resource that they are.

Special outift required to clean up toxic dust from treated pine fencing posts.

We have always been dubious about fencing as unless you really need to keep something in then it also works the other way and keeps other things out. Most particularly where we live fences form barriers for wildlife and can limit their ability to move through their habitat home ranges. As we don’t have ay pets, we chose to live where we do to enjoy the local wildlife, we are quite happy to have no fencing around our property. Although on 2 sides of our boundary our neighbours have fences up to keep in pets or livestock.

We do maintain a fence around our vegetable patch to ensure that the local wildlife don’t eat our human food. We keep our indigenous plants healthy on our bush block to ensure wildlife have their own food too. We maintain our boundary to our property by just having metal stake/pickets to mark the border, but without any wire, wildlife are freely able to move across this boundary. We absolutely would not use any barbed wire this is a really nasty product, totally unnecessary and highly like to injure, humans, livestock, pets or wildlife. Additionally smaller wildlife can be trapped on the barbs often leading to a long slow and painful death.

Since the bushfire in February 2009 we have also become very wary of treated pine posts used in fencing. These are very popular and used widely throughout Australia for fencing and many other uses. After the bushfire event these posts had burnt and left behind piles of green toxic dust, containing nasty chemicals like chromium, copper and arsenic. After the bushfire it was very warm and dusty for 3 weeks until we received some rain and this dust would have been blowing around. This is really scary considering how many thousands of kilometres of fencing was burnt leaving behind toxic dust, who knows where it all ended up!

We quickly ensured we cleaned up and disposed of any toxic soil close to our property. Bagging soil for proper disposal through waste companies who could deal with such nasty chemicals.

The fencing that we do have around our vegetable patch uses recycled untreated (no chemicals) hardwood posts and recycled fencing wire (no barbs). We pick up most of the materials we need for this small amount of fencing off hard waste, the material scraps thrown away by others in our area. Metal posts marking our boundary also survived the bushfire and did not need replacing. I would not recommend that anyone use treated pine anywhere near a food growing area as the chemicals can leach into the soil.

Pumpkins a sustainable food source.

From a sustainability point of view growing pumpkins is right up there. They are easy to grow and harvest. Often self germinating seeds can be pulled out as seedlings from my compost bin or worm farm and transplanted directly to the pumpkin patch. They provide a large amount of filling and healthy food. You can add pumpkin to a wide variety of recipes and can even eat pumpkin seeds.

They don’t require any energy to process them for storage due to their thick and protective skins. Pumpkins stored well can easily last over the following winter and spring. It’s also really easy to remove, clean and store away seeds for growing yourself more free pumpkins the following year. If you have the space to grow pumpkins just go for it. They get the big thumbs up from us!