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The Sustainable Hour no. 564 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Re-imagining what really matters
This week’s Sustainable Hour is a celebration of resilience, purpose and community. We take you inside the buzzing Tiny Homes Expo in Geelong, where thousands gathered to explore an alternative way of living that is affordable, sustainable and deeply connected to people’s needs.
At the heart of this episode are two moving conversations recorded at the expo, revealing that tiny homes are far more than dwellings on wheels. They represent freedom, resilience in the face of climate collapse, and the rediscovery of community spirit.
. . .
In the start of the Hour, after Tony Gleeson‘s acknowledgement of country, Mik Aidt explains how South Australia – a state of 1.9 million people – now leads the world in renewable energy with record-breaking wind power and household solar, showing what a post-fossil fuel reality looks like.
Colin Mockett’s global outlook then widens the lens to Europe, Africa, the Pacific and the US – from devastating heatwaves and international climate diplomacy to American scientists fighting back against denialism, and even a positive update from the eco-conscious Forest Green Rovers football club.
. . .
Rochelle Ryan, president of the Australian Tiny House Association, shares how tiny homes provided her with housing security when facing homelessness and how they are offering thousands of Australians an affordable, environmentally friendly path forward. For her, tiny living is not about minimalism but about empowerment, mobility and sustainability.
→ To find out more about the Australian Tiny House Association, go to: www.tinyhouse.org.au.
You can listen to each of the three parts of Rochelle’s interview separately here:
. . .
Andy Greig from Swift Tiny Homes in Geelong explains how their community-based project links building skills with social enterprise, creating social equity while addressing housing stress. He speaks candidly about purpose, joy and the simple truth that happiness often comes from caring for others.
Swift Tiny Homes is a Cloverdale Community Centre partnership project. Andy is going to teach the skills necessary to build homes. Facebook post here – and more info on www.swifttinyhomes.com.au.
Andy is the Managing Director at Agunya Ltd.
→ You can connect with Andy on Linkedin.com
. . .
SONGS
Interwoven with these interviews are original songs inspired by the themes of giving, equity and living lightly on the Earth. Together they form a soundtrack for what Andy calls “the upstream work” of re-imagining what really matters.
‘Sustainable Living’
‘What Makes Us Happy’
‘Starting From Today’
Lyrics for all three songs can be found in the transcript.
– A song of tiny homes and huge hearts, where happiness is found in giving and community. Inspired by Andy Greig from Swift Tiny Homes. Premiered in today’s Sustainable Hour no. 564.
→ More songs from The Sustainable Hour
. . .
We also play a short excerpt from the Novara podcast where Dr Jason Hickel talks about economy and our need for improving well-being and ecology – the video clip was posted on Instagram.
. . .
SUMMING UP
As Tony reminds us, the key word here is ‘resilience’. In the age of climate disruption, tiny homes and huge hearts show us how communities can adapt, thrive and find joy in sharing.
Once again, this week’s show challenges the status quo. We hear from two people who have chosen to take a different pathway after a personal crisis in their lives, and their lives are now very much the better for those choices as they have rediscovered community spirit, resilience and purpose in life. After all, isn’t it the status quo that got us into the mess we are in anyway?
We thank both Rochelle and Andy for doing this, and we will continue to look for more expressions and examples of community resilience and joy, week after week. Be tiny – be happy!
“I think like this now: that my duty to myself and my own well-being is to care for others. So the more I care for others, the better I feel about myself. And that’s something you can learn. You can’t be told that until you experience it.”
~ Andy Greig, Swift Tiny Homes
→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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→ RenewEconomy – 4 September 2025:
Grid security needs cut to single gas turbine in latest step towards 100 pct net renewables
“South Australia currently operates at an annual average of 75 per cent wind and solar – the highest in Australia and the world for a grid of its size – and has an official target of reaching 100 per cent “net” renewables by the end of 2027. Rooftop solar, now on the rooftops of 50 per cent of households in the state, can bring operational demand down below zero, highlighting the need for curtailment and more battery storage.”
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Beyond sustainability – a regenerative revolution🌱
The latest episode of The Business Revolution podcast features regenerative mentor and systems thinker Tomi Winfree. With 25 years of experience, Tomi reveals how moving beyond traditional sustainability and “extractive” business models can lead to personal, professional, and community thriving.
This is a must-listen for leaders and entrepreneurs who want to make a genuine impact. Tomi discusses:
- The three levels of regenerative practice: individual, business, and community.
- How to find your business’s true purpose and reconnect with what gives work meaning.
- Overcoming “global overwhelm” by focusing on your local community and building relationships on the ground.
- The importance of co-creating solutions and building trust to tackle complex challenges.
Tomi’s insights prove that a thriving ecosystem is essential for a thriving business. Tune in to be inspired!
🎧 Listen now:
→ Visit The Business Revolution website for more resources, information and transcript on
www.businessrevolution.earth/businessrevolution16
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 564
Antonio Guterres, UN Chief:
The sun is rising on a clean energy age.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. As always, we’d like to acknowledge that we’re on the land that’s been nurtured by the Wadawurrung people for millennia. We’d like to acknowledge the custodians, past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future as elders. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded – always was and always will be First Nations land. In the time that they’ve spent nurturing both their land and their communities over those millennium of years, they’ve acquired an ancient wisdom and it’s this ancient wisdom that has much for us as we look at navigating the climate emergency.
Mik Aidt:
On Saturday, South Australia’s wind turbines delivered 50 per cent more electricity than what South Australia as a state actually needed. 147 per cent of their electricity demand was provided by wind turbines. So on Saturday, South Australia was actually exporting electricity to us, the states around South Australia. 720 megawatts of electricity was exported.
And in South Australia, more than half of all households in that state have solar on the roof now. So in short, while the rest of Australia here in Victoria, in New South Wales and so on are squabbling blah, blah, about whether or not renewables are good or bad, South Australia is quietly and confidently heading towards their goal of becoming 100 per cent powered by renewables. And they have a goal that they will do that in just two years from now.
And meanwhile, they’re installing batteries so that they can stabilise the system and counter this thing about, ‘when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine’ well, then we have batteries. At the moment, their annual average is that they have reached 75 per cent. So 75 per cent of their electricity is coming from renewables per year. And for a grid of the size of South Australia’s, that’s actually the highest in the world.
So South Australia is not just a leader here in Australia, they are a leader in the world. We don’t need fossil fuels any longer. That’s the bottom line. Anyone who’s trying to convince you about that is lying.
And I just learned something. My electric car is going four times the distance for the same amount of energy as your fossil fuel car does. Think about that.
And in the meanwhile, let’s hear what else has been happening around the world. Colin Mockett OAM – what do you have for us this week?
. . .
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Yes, thank you, Mik. My roundup this week begins in Europe after what turned out to be a catastrophic late summer heat wave during which Spain experienced its longest heat wave on record. They went for 16 consecutive days with temperatures above 43°C degrees. Then in August, fires stoked by the heat burned more than 40,000 acres in France and Greece and 60 per cent of Italian cities were placed under high alert for deadly temperatures. Now in light of all that, a new report from Europe but sourced in Kenya was released. It said that in essence that things were just as bad, if not worse, in Africa during that same period but it just wasn’t reported in the world’s press.
Now, this was according to Joyce Kimutai, who is principal meteorologist and climate scientist at the Kenya Meteorological Department. ‘Because we assume,’ she said, ‘that places that are always hot can cope with extreme temperatures. Now that’s the misconception that because Africa is warm anyway, people are tolerant to the heat,’ she said. ‘I think that tolerance level is now superseded. The current system of analysis is not good enough,’ she added. ‘It underestimates heat waves completely.’
Her report called the African heat wave a major problem and highlighted a need to develop action plans to help prepare for other unexpectedly dangerous temperatures and warn people about the delayed and unseen risks of extreme heat exposure in Africa.
‘When people go to hospitals, they go, for example, for cardiac arrest or stroke. And that’s what is written down: a stroke,’ a medical expert was quoted in her report. ‘But what caused that stroke is not immediately seen. It frequently was because of the heat.’
The report said that African governments needed to proactively and explicitly tell people to take precautions, like staying inside, drinking lots of water, avoiding alcohol, or just staying in cold places. It noted that air conditioners are rare in Africa, and frequently, even if you’ve got an air conditioner, the power supplies are unreliable.
‘Leaders can only warn if they can accurately predict the severity of a heat wave,’ Ms Kimutai said. And that’s not currently possible in many African countries. So a major recommendation of this report was for new weather monitoring stations to be established throughout the continent.
Now to the South Pacific, where climate change has made island nations acutely vulnerable to rising sea levels, the most in the world. These nations are meeting this week in Suva in the Solomon Islands, where a group led by Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, PNG and Vanuatu will be pushing to co-host the COP31 climate summit in 2026 in Adelaide.
The Australian and New Zealand governments will also be at the meeting, and Australia is keen to host COP31 and is backing the bid with lots of diplomatic pressure. But there’s one nation in the way, and that’s Türkiye. Türkiye has put in its own bid to host the talks in 2026, and it’s refusing to concede to Australia’s South Pacific effort. Despite a growing number of nations who support the Australian bid. With Türkiye standing firm, it’s now been left to the two competing countries to come to an agreement themselves because there is no formal UN process for the nations to vote on where the next COP is. Now diplomacy has failed to resolve the impasse after our government’s climate change minister Chris Bowen flew to Ankara last month and tried to persuade Türkiye to concede. But those in all subsequent talks with island nations leaders all met with stonewall resistance.
Insiders now say the most likely path to a resolution is when our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese goes to New York at the end of this month to address the UN General Assembly. He’ll then have the opportunity to talk with Turkish President Erdogan on the sidelines of the UN meeting, and the two are likely to thrash out an agreement one way or the other. But those same inside sources are also forecasting that Albanese and Bahman will deliver a package inside the next 10 days that will outline a much strengthened and ambitious climate agenda for Australia. They say that if our nation is to chart a course to become a clean energy and green export superpower, which is its stated ambition, then it will need to be announced within the next two weeks.
Politically, this would also help Adelaide’s 2026 COP bid. As Energy Minister Bowen said, Australia’s new emissions target need to be both ambitious and achievable. They also need to be attractive enough to deliver the kind of investment we need as a renewable energy sector. Now as things stand, we would need to lift our renewable targets to even achieve the current target of reducing emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. We’re unlikely to even meet that.
The new target is likely to be 75 per cent reduction or more by 2035, which will need a considerable effort by all sectors from the governments through business and investment sectors onwards. It entails at least a doubling of renewable energy generation. Now to put this into perspective, the UK has announced a target to reduce its emissions by 81 per cent by 2035, and we will be competing with them. Business and government sources are tipping that our new target will be similar to the UK’s. And alongside this, Australia will need to deliver plans that will help South Pacific neighbours.
Now with this in mind, COP31 Adelaide could bring new packages and platforms to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy across all the Pacific Island nations. In short, we would pay for their solar panels. Now this would help their government rid themselves of the huge cost of importing fossil fuels. Sometimes up to a quarter of their GDP just goes on fossil fuels to generate power. Now this freeing up and easing of debt burdens would allow those nations themselves to look at their own climate change measures. At the moment they haven’t got money for it.
So next we go to the US where Bill McKibben reported in the New Yorker that the Trump administration newly selected EPA members, and they published a 20-page report in July calling climate change a hoax and saying it was merely a symptom of our rapidly advancing and modernising world.
This prompted a group of 86 American scientists to join forces and put together their own report which was released last Tuesday. This one runs to 400 pages and it absolutely shreds every line in the July report. And it was widely quoted in most American media outlets. So maybe, just maybe, American science is beginning to fight back against its own precedent’s campaign of misinformation.
And finally, Forest Green Rovers, the world’s most environmentally conscious sports team, played twice last week. On Wednesday the vegan men’s team played Morecombe away and they won 3-1. Well at the weekend they played Scunthorpe at home and they won 1-0. Now that leaves the Rovers two points clear at the top of the ladder. And as for the Forest Green Rovers women’s team they haven’t begun their season yet. So that little bit of good news ends my round up for the week.
. . .
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
. . .
Tony:
Thanks very much for that, Colin, particularly exciting… well, the last three items: The scientists in the states are fighting back. We’re on the way to more realistic and necessary essential targets. And then you bring it home with the Forest Green Rovers. Good news around the men’s team. So yeah, on with the show. Mik, I understand you were at the Tiny Homes Expo on the weekend. Any news from there?
Mik: (13:43)
Yes, very much, I think. It was a really, really good experience. I was overwhelmed with the size of it all. Who would have thought? You know, the Geelong Showgrounds where I used to take my kids there, I think in October… It’s a quite large area, and there’s plenty of stalls and different things. It’s very busy, with thousands of people and so on. Well, this was not far from, you know – there were thousands of people there and so many tiny homes that I could not count how many. They were all over the place and it was a long walk to go through these long corridors with one house after the other and so many different types and people were coming in and out of them lining up.
It was a little bit like going to a fun fair and the atmosphere was great. There was blue sky, no wind, people were chatting. There was like a place where people could sit and there would be presentations and speeches and so on. It was a great atmosphere. So, yes, it was a very, very good experience.
Colin:
It’s almost a contradiction in terms of a big exhibition about tiny homes.
Mik:
I know, I know! And then, you know, when you begin to chat with people, the passion that you see… You always talk about the shine in people’s eyes, Tony, you should see some people here who were passionate about what they were talking about. I can give some examples. I recorded two interviews out there, and I think we should listen to what these people were saying.
The first one I met very early in the morning actually was Rochelle Ryan, who is the president of the Australian Tiny House Association. And she was just about to go up on stage and speak, you know, give a speech to the first people there in the morning. And I asked her simply to explain what this Australian Tiny House Association is and also, you know, a bit about how she got into it.
Rochelle Ryan:
My name is Rochelle Ryan and I’m the Voluntary President of the Australian Tiny House Association and I’m here to advocate for anyone that chooses to live in a tiny house on wheels because it’s at a local government level that you need approval or at least your neighbours approval to be able to live in your tiny home on wheels and that’s over 500 local councils across Australia so we are a national association run by volunteers for the community.
Mik:
And why do you do that?
Rochelle:
Because I live in a tiny house. I’ve lived in a tiny house for three years. My tiny house is extremely small. It’s 10 square meters. So it’s the size of a car park. But I have a full-size fridge, washing machine, shower. I work from home as well in my 10 square meters. But as a woman over the age of 50, I had very limited options. And so I was facing homelessness. And like many, I had been watching all the YouTube clips. And so I self-built my tiny home because that was the most affordable way.
So the industry started out with self-builders, so you get a trailer, use recyclable materials, and if you’re a bit handy, you can build your own tiny home on wheels. I’m not that handy because I have severe arthritis, so I paid contractors. So I project managed my own tiny home build, but now I have my own home. And I’ve lived in three different states in my tiny home, so… when work says there’s a promotion and an opportunity for me to advance my career, but housing is an issue at the location and so they’re struggling to get staff to go there, I go, no problems, I can take my home with me. So it not only gives me housing security, but it’s also been really good for my career.
So in order for me to give back to the community and let people know who are facing homelessness or the unhoused, that this is an option in the community. So that’s why I volunteer and I then became the president of this not for proper, just so that we can raise community awareness and also assist governments with policies that they may need in order to have tiny homes in their community.
The average cost in Australia is a million dollars to have a home and my tiny home cost me $50,000. So from a sustainable point of view, I’ve got a very small footprint and the same with tiny homes. So even if you’re using brand new products to build your home, you’re using a fraction of what is needed in a small suburban home. So therefore, the less materials you’re consuming, the better it is for our environment. But a lot of tiny homes also use recyclable materials.
And they can actually get the seven star rating – so with double glazed windows well insulation so when you’re running like air conditioners and heaters. They’re very energy efficient so to live in them to build them is very cost-effective to live in them. I mean, I’ve got an air conditioner in my tiny home and it’s just, I’ve got the smallest one and I can only run it for like five or ten minutes at a time because it cools it down so quickly and it heats it so quickly then I don’t have to use it at all for the rest of the day. because of how well insulated my tiny home is.
You can orientate your home, you don’t want to move it very often but because of the size of the tiny home you can actually have it orientated for passive. To capture the best way that the sun is facing and the way the wind is blowing. Whereas a lot of traditional homes because they just have to fit the block.
It’s not about how passive, you can’t capture that passive part of having a home, but having that tiny home on wheels, you’re able to do that. So from a build perspective, they’re super cheap. Also the build times is less. So it’s just from manpower, instead of taking two and a half years to build a home, a traditional home, I can build a tiny home in a week. So from a manpower perspective, we can actually replicate tiny homes and get more people off the streets out of the rentals into owning their own home, the land is the issue.
So you’re renting land, so that’s where we need support from the state governments because they control how the land is used. So yeah, it’s multifaceted, but it’s extremely environmentally friendly. It’s actually really good for utilising the skill shortages that we’ve got so we can get tradies making homes quicker. And from a passive perspective, you can have a tiny home orientated on a block of land to actually capture that passive heating and cooling because these huge houses are just stuck on how they can fit on the block, not passively. So they’re extremely environmentally friendly and we see it as the way of the future. So like AirB&B’s and Uber, tiny homes are here to stay because it fits and ticks so many boxes, but it just takes a while for the government to come on board.
And we’re working at all levels of government, so federal, state and local governments. We’ve got some really proactive local governments, Surf Coast being one of the local governments that have got a tiny house policy. So that’s a very innovative local council here in Victoria that we’re really proud to have partnered with.
VIDEO CLIP
Dr Jason Hickel on Novara podcast – instagram video clip:
People will say, capitalism is this great driver of innovation, and we live in the best possible worlds. No, this is a lie. Look at the world around us. We live in a miserable world, actually. And capitalism, in fact, limits what we can achieve. It limits our capacity for innovation, because innovation, we only get innovation that is profitable to capital, right? Not innovations that we actually need for improving well-being and ecology. And it limits what we can actually do with our labor. We know what we need to be doing: building the houses, building the renewable energy systems, building the public transit. But we are not permitted to do those things even though we have the capacity to do it because we don’t have control over our productive capacities.
This is crazy. For capital, the purpose of production is not in fact to meet human needs or to achieve social progress, much less any ecological goals. That’s not the objective. The objective is very singular, which is to maximise and accumulate profit. Now, this leads to, as a result, perverse forms of production, right? So capital makes massive investments in producing things that are profitable to capital, things like SUVs and fast fashion and mansions and private jets and military industrial complexes, right?
So we get massive production of those things and we get chronic shortages of obviously necessary things, like, affordable housing and public transit and renewable energy and so on. And so this is actually what explains our paradox, the double crisis that we face right now in the world, right? Which is an ecological crisis driven by massive production to the point of overshooting six planetary boundaries, driving ecological breakdown. But at the same time, we have massive deprivation socially. You know, two billion people around the world live in food insecurity. I mean, something as basic as food security cannot be supplied by capitalism for everybody. Five billion people, you know, lack access to necessary health care. Right?
And this is obviously mostly in the periphery of the world system. But it’s true also in the imperial core, in the high income nations themselves where, I was just looking at data on this recently actually, 100 million people in the USA and Europe live in food insecurity. I mean, think about this. The richest countries in the world cannot even guarantee something as simple as food security to their citizens. The working classes in these regions are immiserated despite the vast wealth that they produce.
. . .
SONG 1
‘Sustainable living’
[Verse 1]
Morning sun peeks through my window pane
See my neighbour planting in the rain
Trading tomatoes for her fresh-baked bread
Simple choices moving us ahead
Look around at faces that I know
Every seed we plant helps others grow
People gathering in the town today
Making changes in a brand new way
[Pre-chorus]
Hand in hand we’re building something real
Share the food, share the way we feel
Every small step leads us to believe
In the power of you and me
[Chorus]
Sustainable living, bringing us together
Sustainable living, any kind of weather
Sustainable living, changing how we move
Sustainable living, everything we do
[Verse 2]
Sally shows me how to save the rain
While Tim’s creating compost down the lane
Kids are learning how to plant and grow
Making gardens row by row by row
Someone’s sharing bikes they used to ride
Someone’s teaching skills they used to hide
Every person brings a different part
Now we’re learning how to make a start
[Bridge]
Remember when we felt so far apart?
Now look how close we are
From tiny seeds to open hearts
We’ve come so very far
[Chorus]
Sustainable living, bringing us together
Sustainable living, any kind of weather
Sustainable living, changing how we move
Sustainable living, everything we do
. . .
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk provides an update on flooding in March 2022: (26:23)
The rain event that Brisbane had over that two to three day period in total is equivalent to 80 per cent of the rainfall that we would receive in one year. That’s phenomenal. In two to three days, 80 per cent of the rainfall that Brisbane would usually receive was during that period. And we have over 30 suburbs across the southeast that received over 1,000 millimetres…
Rochelle:
In 2022 a natural disaster hit the northern regions of New South Wales and Queensland where massive floods caused 50,000 homes not to be occupied anymore. All those families fled into all the rental markets and so I was then unable to get a rental and my only option for me as a woman who had a dependent child, so my daughter was in her final year of high school, was a tiny house. I thought this was just a project that I was going to use further down the track as my retirement plan. This is my housing security once all my kids left home. But in 2022, we were under the extreme pressure of trying to find somewhere to live. And so I know what it’s like to go to these long queues and wait and wait and wait, put in an application and hope and hope and hope that someone’s going to say, yes, you can live in their home. And to be told no over and over and over again was devastating, especially with a daughter in Grade 12.
I mean her focus should have been on getting the highest ATAR and yet here she was facing homelessness and so I had to jump quickly and so the tiny home became our only option and so for the last three years I’ve lived there. My daughter and I lived together in 10 square metres for six months which was hard, two people living in such a small space but now she’s doing the uni student share house thing.
I don’t want to do a share house, I did that when I was at uni. I don’t want to have to share a fridge. I don’t want to have to worry about watching TV till 10 o’clock at night and keeping my roommates up. I don’t want to have to do that and I don’t want people getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning to go and do their shift work because I want to sleep in. I just wanted my own place and I wanted to be able to paint the walls, I wanted to be able to hang a picture up, you know, I wanted to put my own curtains in, I wanted to personalise the space after years and years and years of renting. I’d spent all this money on a tiny home. I wanted it to be for me and now this is my forever home.
I don’t have to worry about housing insecurity. And the relief of that, when I come and talk to these expos, I see women in my same situation. They’re facing homelessness. There’s no option for them. The government’s not going to help them. They’re not eligible for any benefits because they’re actually contributing to society. So the only option for them is to either couch surf, sleep in their car, or if they can afford to, get into a tiny house.
And so this has been a lifesaver for me. I mean, I was, you know, there’s almost a PTSD aspect of being forced into homelessness. The saddest thing you can ever do is go to a storage container place on a Saturday morning and watch everyone pack their lives into these six by six or three by three little containers. And they’re shoving their whole life in there because, and I look at them and I know they’re going to be couch surfing because they’ve got nowhere else to live.
I now have the privilege of having a 3×3 storage unit where my kids and I interchange in it. So if we go camping, we go to the storage unit. We get stuff out, then we go put things back. So the storage unit has become an optional extra, but what I pay in $2.30 a month, I mean if I had a traditional house, I’d be paying $600, $700, $800 a week just to store my camping gear, my record collection, the kids photo albums. Now that’s just in a storage unit for $2.30 a month. It’s such an affordable way to live, but you don’t actually feel like, I say to people when you come to live in a tiny house, you don’t have to be a minimalist. You can still have your stuff. You just have to think of it in a different way, or how you’re going to store it. Maybe it’s a shipping container that you rent. Maybe it’s a shipping container you put on someone’s land. Maybe it’s just big, waterproof boxes that sit underneath your tiny home. You know, the tiny homes are so versatile. But once you’re out of that mental pressure of how am I going to live and you’re actually into a new way of living, I mean, it’s the world you’re over.
I call it ‘the Swiss army knife of living’. It’s like you can just make it multifaceted however you want. And then, so I’ve gone from heavily depressed, extremely anxious, not knowing where we’re going to sleep to off any depressants. I’ve got this huge future. My career is blooming because I can take my home wherever I want. And I have so many options open to me now because I’m not restricted by the housing crisis. So I’ve gone from having no hope to multiple options because I can take my home wherever I want to go.
Mik:
Towards the end of our chat on Saturday sitting there at the expo, which was just opening up at the time, Rochelle also gave me an insight into, you you could say some of the deeper aspects of what it means to have a tiny home.
Rochelle:
In the future, I feel – because of the climate collapse that’s coming, we’ve got a multifaceted, government collapse, economic collapse, environment collapse, I needed to look at a way that I could live safely. If there’s no power, no water, no food, how am I going to live? And a tiny house was a key component to that. So I feel that I will be able to make my home safe because I can move it wherever.
Wherever natural disaster has hit, because climate crisis is that, it’s just massive amounts of displacement because of natural disasters. So I can take my tiny home to a safe place and continue to move when the climate crisis continues to unfold. And also from an economic point of view: AI is taking my job – I was told 18 months but I think it’s only going to be a couple of months. So when AI takes my job, I have housing security because I own it and also I can take it where the food production is or where there’s enough sunlight for me to be able to have energy. I feel like, and I know because I follow Sarah Wilson, she’s a journalist and she actually wrote a book about collapse on Substack and so I was a paid subscriber. That book is coming out in the new year, and it’s all about documenting how society needs to, it’s called ‘The Great Serialisation’ and how it’s essentially about coming back to community and sharing resources.
So I feel that my tiny home will allow me to find like-minded people as the collapse continues to unfold and that I’ll be able to take my home, my skills and contribute to a community in our shared resources. So in this Great Serialisation, I’ve aligned myself and the way that I live, including my tiny home, to be a part of the solution of the multiple facet collapse. So I’m future-proofing myself. So that’s where I see myself being a part of the solution in a climate crisis. Now I’m currently up-skilling. So I’m trying to learn as, so I can make soap, I can can, can, so when I can sew.
I can recycle, I can mend things, so I’m making sure that my skills are going to be available to the community that I end up in.
That’s nice, isn’t it? So a couple of things out of that. Number one, how many times have you seen in the media people escaping from a disaster and blocking the roads and leaving everything behind, flooded houses, fires, that sort of thing, and hoping that they will be able to get back another day. That’s a whole new thing.
. . .
Colin: (34:17)
That’s really lovely what Rochelle was describing… because, I mean, I can see people just getting out of the way by moving their homes when they’re first warned about a disaster currently coming. So she’s really, she’s got everything sorted hasn’t she? She’s debt free, she’s able to move where the work is or the sunshine is and she can start her own repair cafe wherever she sets up. You know, she’s got those skills that she can fix people’s clothing or other bits and pieces, whatever skills she’s bringing in. That’s lovely. That’s a really futuristic looking outlook. It’s just a positive way of thinking.
Tony:
The key word there Colin is resilience. That’s her aim – is to be able to survive no matter what.
Mik:
Mmmm. I think ‘resilience’ was a key word for the entire expo. As I was walking down, there were some really impressive tiny homes, which were so big that you wouldn’t call them tiny homes, honestly, but they still had wheels under them. Like there would be two floors and they would be massive, but under the definition of a ‘tiny home’ because it’s on wheels. And, as I walked down one of these avenues of tiny homes, there was a very small tiny home, not even finished, which turned out to be by a Geelong initiative called Swift Tiny Homes. Swift Tiny Homes is linked up with the community house in Norlane, Cloverdale Community House, and this is very much about creating resilience among the local residents in the north of Geelong. I had a chat there with Andy Greig, who is one of the people behind Swift Tiny Homes.
Andy Greig:
Community development is delivered in the grassroots context in through the Shire, basically, or through the local government, and it’s been my experience that community development sits underneath economic development. So, community development is not the number one priority in our communities, and this is everywhere. The number one priority is economic development, and then community development sits underneath that.
Virtually rendering it ineffective with the job that I see community development needs to do now. And that is providing an environment where we don’t need so much support, you know what I mean, for the bottom of our society. So this little tiny home project now, I believe is really important because it deals with some of the social aspects of community development that are overlooked in the economic development conversation.
And this particular process here with Swift Tiny Homes and Cloverdale Community House out in North Geelong, that collaborative approach… So we bring the registered builder aspect to that. We bring the community context to that through Cloverdale, so they know what the issues are in our social demographic around Geelong.
And from my perspective… – I’m a trainer, I’ve had experience in community development in a bigger picture context around Australia – I believe that this is how we can deliver on social enterprise, which builds social equity. So that’s a conversation that we need to have far more broadly in our society, because people don’t understand what social enterprise does in the community.
And basically, in layman’s terms, the profits from a similar type of business model, but the profits go back into an identified need in the community. So that’s community equity that we’re building through this process. And that’s what this little tiny home process does here. So it ticks those three boxes: So you’ve got function, form and finish in that context.
So community development is not something that can be dictated to by economic priorities. Because in this modern, Western world we live in, economic priorities rule the roost. And it gets back to that capitalist system that’s become very heartless and soulless. And that’s the big struggle. So if you want to zoom out far enough or go upstream far enough to kind of stop the knife wound, rather than just putting a bandaid on it, then we go up river far enough or upstream far enough and we see what is causing the issues in Australia: We’re giving away our resources. We’re giving them away. We’re paying people, overseas corporations, who’ve got no soul or heart in the community context, taking our resources and we’re paying them to come here and dig it up to supply a few jobs.
I think community education is the way forward… The average punter, average middle class person in Australia is more focused on the game of football on the weekend and knows more about who the players are, who the coaches are, how that whole system works than how your community works. And that allows division to come in and we focus on immigration as the problem, rather than understanding that in actual fact, houses per capita in the last four five years, there are more houses per capita in Australia than there were five years ago. So it’s a lie. We’re being fed a lie that, you know, we’re being invaded by hordes of people that we can’t look after. No, no, no, we’re being invaded by multinational corporations who are sucking the resources and the lifeblood out of our communities. And we’re assisting them, you know, so.
Mik:
What’s driving this… Personally, what’s driving YOU in this – why are you here?
Andy:
I’m the black sheep of the family from a big family and my great great grandfather came to Australia in 1847 as a colonist. Had 13 children, built a bluestone mansion in Keelaw, had 13 children, 7 sons, had properties all up the east coast, right up into Queensland, massive beautiful properties, and my family is incredibly wealthy and incredibly fortunate and incredibly privileged, and I believe that someone in the family at some stage needed to go out and see what damage that might have caused, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way but you know… Colonisation has caused some issues and if we don’t turn around and have a look in the rear-vision mirror for a minute and go, ‘Well why have we got this social disconnect with the Australians first people?’ Why don’t we look at that as the most amazing opportunity to learn about the 60,000 years of sustainability?
So I’m doing this because I care, for some reason. I can’t put my finger on it. But… I had a business failure, I had a marriage failure in my early mid-30s. And I think that’s an opportunity for me then to readdress things and have a really good look in the mirror and go, ‘Well, what actually does make me happy?’, you know, rather than trying to fill that family obligation to be the next colonist, you know, in our own country.
So I guess I’m… Yeah, circumstances I think have created who I am, a lot, you know. Unless you’ve suffered some considerable loss, I don’t think you actually appreciate what you’ve got sometimes. You know. Well, that’s my story.
Mik: (42:37)
Talking about life and happiness – what’s your take on this?
Andy:
Well, that’s a really interesting question that I would answer that way different than when I was a younger man, but it occurred to me that for me to be happy now, it’s not about my own comfort or my own well-being, or well, my well-being takes care of itself, right, if my purpose fulfills a need within me that I feel now.
So, to articulate that better, I think like this now: that my duty to myself and my own well-being is to care for others. So the more I care for others the better I feel about myself. And that’s something you can learn. You can’t be told that until you experience it.
I had a cousin who committed suicide many years ago. I suffered some depression after a marriage breakdown myself, and I got very close to that dark place myself. And so I think, if you have, it’s kind of like… you know, you have a lived life experience that kind of creates who you are, to a certain extent. So that’s how I feel about my own experience and who I am now.
So it’s no good for me to think that I’m going to get up and go and make a million dollars today because that’s not my purpose anymore. You know, my purpose is: ‘Well, who can I help today? Who needs help in the community?’
And I think that’s leading really now towards community education. And it gets full circle back to, you know, ‘What is social equity?’ I’d like to put that in the paper on the front page and just put it there and then see what comes back: ‘What is social equity?’ Who knows what social equity is?
You know, we do that all the time with sports stars and movie stars and we idolise all that sort of stuff. Well, let’s start talking about the things in our community that are really important, you know. Social equity, what is that? It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? And again, that’ll take you into the environment and all the aspects of what keep us healthy, and keep our social emotional well-being intact, in good shape.
. . .
SONG 2 (at 45:01)
‘What Makes Us Happy’ – audio
Verse 1
My life was empty, I’d lost my way
I felt I had nothing more to say
Then one day it became clear to me
I find my joy in community
Chorus
What makes me happy? Who can I help?
The more I give, the lighter I feel
Upstream flows a deeper call
To lift each other, one and all
Verse 2
Homes rising, walls of care
Tiny expenses, plenty to share
More than a shelter, a house that I own
Dignity, equity, a place I call home
Chorus
What makes me happy? Who can I help?
The more I give, the lighter I feel
Upstream flows a deeper call
To lift each other, one and all
Bridge
Tiny homes, huge hearts
This is real community starts
Chorus
What makes you happy? Who can you help?
The more you give, the lighter you feel
Upstream flows a deeper call
To lift each other, one and all
Outro
Tiny homes, huge hearts
This is real community starts:
What makes us happy? Who can we help today?
. . .
Audio statement in the song
Andy Greig:
Talking about things in our community that are really important. My purpose is: who am I going to help today? Who needs help in the community?
. . .
Colin: (47:44)
That’s a very nice way to round off, Mik.
Mik:
And this really made me happy, honestly, to see these people who had found such joy and such deep satisfaction in something that you would never think if you just hear the word, there’s a tiny home expo out on Geelong show ground. There’s certainly more to tell. And I think the size of the expo in itself showed that this is a big, big movement and there’s a lot of interest – much more than I thought – here in Geelong.
Colin:
Where do most of the tiny homes get put? They don’t wind up in caravan parks, do they?
Mik: (48:38)
Not at all. I think each tiny home owner finds their own arrangement. They go around, they scout for a place, they talk to owners where they see a bit of land, you know, a corner that could maybe be used on a property. And then they knock the door and say, would you like to have a tiny home on your property?
Colin:
Well, it’s really been interesting this one, Mik. Thank you very much.
Mik:
Well, thank you very much for an hour which today was with Rochelle Ryan from the Australian Tiny House Association and Andy Greig, who is from the Swift Tiny Homes at Geelong organisation. And we’ll put the links to these places and more information about the tiny homes on our show notes, which we put on climatesafety.info.
Jingle
Mik: (49:31)
That’s all we could fit in this tiny home special Sustainable Hour.
Tony:
Yeah, I understand what you’re saying about Andy, Mik. He just really emanates that joy and yeah, makes this the work we do here so much more interesting and nourishing.
Mik:
I think there’s a lot in it for us when we talk about sustainability and we talk about climate change, many negative words. We certainly need to think about what is it that makes us tick? What is it that makes us happy? And I love the recipe that Andy has found.
Tony:
And we’ll keep doing our best to promote that week after week after week. People all over the planet that have got that spark in their eye because they know they’re doing the right thing. Something that makes them feel good.
Mik:
Be tiny, be happy.
Colin:
Yeah. Make a small difference.
. . .
SONG 3 (at 50:39)
‘Starting From Today’
Looking at your face right now
As you scroll through the headlines
I see the worry in your eyes
About the world we leave behind
And I know you’re wondering
If anyone will make it right
But baby, let me tell you something
That keeps me up at night
There’s still time to change the way
Things are going day by day
And when you feel like giving up
Remember what I say
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
Dad, I’ve seen the videos
Of how things used to be
Clear skies and clean waters
It’s hard to believe
But I’m not just sitting here
Waiting for a miracle
Got my friends beside me now
We’re making it possible
Every small step counts, they say
Little changes pave the way
When it seems too much to bear
Listen close, I swear
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
We rise together
Hand in hand we’ll find a way
We rise together
Every choice we make today
Shapes tomorrow’s way
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
We rise together
Starting from today
. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
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