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The Sustainable Hour no. 604 | Transcript | Podcast notes
In this week’s Sustainable Hour, we leave the studio and head to Portarlington for the opening of a tiny house – and a conversation about something much bigger than its modest footprint.
Australia is in the middle of a housing crisis. Older women are among those increasingly at risk of homelessness. At the same time, tradespeople, community organisations and local residents are looking for practical ways to build affordable homes, strengthen communities and create meaningful local work.
Could small homes become part of a much bigger solution?
A TINY HOUSE WITH A BIGGER PURPOSE
Builder Robert Patterson takes us through a newly completed tiny house in a Portarlington backyard. It is fully permitted, accessible, comfortable and designed to sit lightly within the existing garden.
The house includes a kitchen, living space, bathroom, bedroom, wheelchair-accessible ramp and small outdoor deck. Robert explains that while every site is different, building several small homes together could bring considerable economies of scale. His larger vision is to move beyond individual backyard projects and establish pilot developments where three, four or five small homes could share a block of land.
For Robert, tiny housing is particularly relevant for people reaching a stage in life where maintaining a conventional house becomes difficult. If someone downsizes into a small home, the larger house they leave behind also becomes available to another household. In other words, one small house can create movement through the wider housing system.
HOUSING SECURITY FOR OLDER WOMAN
Carolyn O’Dwyer McConnell from Sustainable Housing for Older Women on the Bellarine Peninsula – SHOW – explains why the group is exploring small-home projects.
Women over 55 are one of the groups increasingly vulnerable to housing insecurity. Some spent decades raising children, working casually or part-time, or contributing to family businesses without accumulating enough superannuation or personal wealth to purchase a home later in life. Relationship breakdown can make the situation even more precarious.
Carolyn describes women on the Bellarine Peninsula living in cars, house-sitting from place to place, couch surfing and even sleeping overnight in public toilets. It is a largely invisible homelessness. During the day, she says, you may pass these women in the street without having any idea that they have nowhere secure to sleep that night.
SHOW’s ambition is to develop a small community of around five modest homes where women can rent long-term at an affordable rate – potentially paying around 30 per cent of their income.
The vision includes gardens, access to transport and shops, and a shared meeting space. It is housing, but it is also belonging.
“THE OPPOSITE OF POVERTY IS COMMUNITY”
Liz Bonner of Cloverdale Community Centre in Corio has already worked with Robert on prototype components for tiny homes and sees the idea as an opportunity to combine housing with training, employment and community development. People who may not have flourished within conventional education could learn construction skills while producing something real and useful.
Liz points to one of the advantages of this particular construction method: the house can be assembled from panels brought through narrow spaces without cranes or major destruction of the existing landscape. When she arrived in the garden, she says, the tiny house looked as though it belonged there.
Her ambitions go much further. Liz talks about the possibility of creating a worker-owned cooperative to manufacture small homes locally – giving workers ownership, income and a say in how the enterprise develops.
Drawing inspiration from cooperative models she has seen overseas, she argues that economic development does not always have to mean attracting another giant corporation. A local manufacturing economy can circulate money through the community, create skills and strengthen relationships.
Her underlying philosophy is simple: “The opposite of poverty is community.” Poverty, she argues, is not simply about a shortage of money. It can also be a shortage of resources, opportunity, connection and local control.
Cloverdale is exploring what a genuine wellbeing economy could look like in Corio-Norlane – a community with a proud manufacturing history that has also experienced the consequences of industrial decline and economic restructuring. The aim is to rebuild local prosperity from the ground up.
A VISIT FROM PARLIAMENT
Federal Member for Corangamite Libby Coker joins the Portarlington gathering and tours the completed house. She welcomes the initiative and particularly its potential to help women over 55, families and people facing homelessness or family violence.
The gathering becomes a glimpse of what can happen when builders, community organisations, educators, residents and politicians meet around something tangible. Instead of talking abstractly about the housing crisis, everyone is standing inside one possible response.
• Build smaller. • Use land differently. • Create secure long-term rental models. • Train local people to build the homes. • Keep more money circulating locally. • Build communities rather than isolated dwellings.
The model still requires land, finance, planning and political support. But the Portarlington house demonstrates that the physical part of the idea can be done.
Now comes the harder question: can Australia build the economic and political structures around it?
THE LOCAL BUTCHER AND THE THINGS WE LOSE
The second half of the Hour takes us far from Portarlington – although perhaps not as far as it first appears. Our roving reporter Rusty – who himself lives in a tiny house – reflects on the death of the butcher in his small village and the subsequent closure of the local butcher shop.
At first, the problem seems practical. Where will he now find the meat he has been buying for himself and his dogs? But gradually another story emerges.
The butcher knew where the meat came from. He knew local farmers. He knew people in the village. Customers talked while standing in the shop. Information was exchanged. Connections were made. Money stayed within the local economy. When the butcher disappeared, the village did not simply lose somewhere to buy meat. It lost part of its social infrastructure.
Rusty’s search for food for his dogs eventually leads him to another regional supplier, and from there into a discussion about homemade dog food, local ingredients, feral deer and the importance he places on knowing where food comes from.
Colin Mockett joins the discussion with memories of training as a butcher when he was young and reflects on the pet food industry and his own experience preparing food for his dog.
Whatever people choose to feed themselves or their animals, Rusty’s story raises a wider question that connects surprisingly well with the tiny-house discussion: What happens when local knowledge, local production and local relationships disappear? And what happens when we begin rebuilding them?
BE PEACEFUL. BE OPEN. BE GENTLE
As the Hour comes to an end, we return to our traditional question: what should we be? Colin says: Be peaceful.
Tony suggests: Be open – listen, observe, learn and act without doing harm.
And Mik, inspired by his recently published book Man of Earth, adds: Be gentle. Be a gentle man – and woman.
. . .
SONG
This week’s Hour ends with the original Sustainable Hour song I Heard It on The Sustainable Hour – a reminder that solutions rarely arrive from somewhere else. They begin when people see what is possible and decide to become part of it. More songs from The Sustainable Hour here
. . .
“Community development under government or philanthropic control is not truly community development. So in doing projects like this, if we can raise revenue that builds community-controlled capital, then the Corio-Norlane community can do what it needs to do to transform and address the disadvantage, bridge the gap, not what other institutions think we should do.”
~ Liz Bonner, CEO at Cloverdale Community Centre in Corio, Geelong
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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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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 604
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00)
Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle: (00:14)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:24)
Good morning listeners. As always, we’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. They accumulated a great depth and width of ancient knowledge from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen. And in that ancient wisdom lies so many solutions to the world we currently face at the moment in the the world of the cr the climate crisis. And if we’re sensible, we use the – or we’re involved in working with them together to go forward.
Mik Aidt: (01:30)
The Sustainable Hour today has moved outside. You’ll be able to hear the birds maybe? We have not only moved outside of the studio but also we have travelled half an hour outside of Geelong to Portarlington. And the reason for that is that today there’s a launch – an official opening of a tiny house. A tiny house in Portarlington, which has just been built over the last couple of months.
And well, normally you don’t have a launch for a tiny house but the reason that I think there’s something special made this this morning in Portarlington at this tiny house is that there’s some perspectives in what it means to be building tiny houses in a time where there’s a lot of talk about housing in Australia. And for that reason also politicians have been invited to come and see this tiny house and the possibilities that there are if we were to build more tiny houses in Australia.
So it would probably be a good idea to start with talking with the builder, and that’s someone who we had on The Sustainable Hour a number of times, Robert Patterson, who is ready here to explain what this is all about.
Robert Patterson: (02:45)
Yeah, well, what we’ve done, Mik, is we just feel it’d be good to get it out there in the community that there’s a real demand for this type of home, and it’s also driven by the fact that there’s a lot of people, older people, older women, that are finding it difficult to find accommodation and we just see that these tiny homes, if we were able to build three of these on a block of land, would give a great opportunity to build something that’s affordable, that people can still put money towards and to find themselves secure home for the next 15 to 20 years.
I mean, I’ve been a builder for the last 25 years and build a lot of homes and a lot of extensions ranging from Yarraville to Geelong. And this was one that was an opportunity to be involved in and to be the registered builder and just to prove that it can be done and we’ve now got all the tradies lined up and if we suddenly had a block of land with we could build three on, we’ve got all everybody’s keen to do it. We’ve got the plasterers, the painters, electricians, plumbers and and it’s just a matter of the the political will if you like, or the community will to actually do a pilot project to see if it can work and if the money can come together and with a bit of perhaps government input, council input, it makes it all possible.
I think that tiny houses are a bit of a real part to play because for every tiny house that’s built, it may be a case that somebody decides, yes, that it’d suit me and if I downsize, which I’m gonna have to do in the next year or two. Maybe there’s maintenance on the house is getting beyond an older person and so a tiny house means that there’s another house becomes available for a family or for the community.
Mik: (04:54)
And speaking of money, what does it actually cost to build this up?
Robert: (04:58)
Well, now there’s the good question, Mik, look, in a round figure you need, you know, there’s a hundred thousand plus… and plus a bit. The reason it’s very difficult is on this particular build, one of the hidden costs was running the sewer from here to the main house and then the power and water. But the other cost was that there was an easement. So the footings had to be very deep. To get below the pipe in the easement, which meant that they were over two metres deep and 450 in diameter, and it all had to be a lot of concrete, and we didn’t know that when we were starting, so that was some you know thousands of dollars extra.
So every site is going to be different. But if you had a nice clean site and you’re gonna build thee of them, well then it’s economies of scale because when you do the sewer work and the power and everything else, it would make it much more economical. So yeah, so let’s say the other costs are that you don’t know the engineering and the design and the of course you’ve got to do energy ratings, it all adds up and that’s why the building all costs a lot of money. But however, when you do build something like this and you do have three of them, then it becomes a home for somebody for you know, for the rest of their lives.
Carolyn O’Dwyer McConnell: (06:27)
My name’s Carolyn, and I’m from SHOW, which is Sustainable Housing for Older Women on the Bellarine Peninsula. And we’ve been looking for different types of housing for women over 55 for rental, long-term affordable rental. And so we’re looking at this project today, this house today, as something that we could perhaps use in our project going forward. So we want something that is that women can grow into.
You know, things this we’re just looking here today and they’ve you know they’ve got ramps, they’ve got wide doors, they’ve got accessible bathrooms for wheelchairs. Yeah, so that’s what we’re doing here on the Bellarine, all well all across Australia and the world. Housing for older women is becoming less and less affordable and available. Rents are going up. A lot of women who have worked all their life raising children, work part-time or casually, don’t have superannuation at this point where the baby boomers are one of them – the baby boomers who have, you know, either had businesses, and or work with husbands in business haven’t then been able to take that forward with them.
So at the end, the pointy end, women don’t have a lot of money that they can spend, if it’s especially if there’s been a marriage breakup, and they end up with not enough to buy something affordable. So that’s the women that we’re focusing on. These women. Some of them are still working,, but quite often working part time, but don’t have enough money to pay the rent. So and unfortunately at this end of this time of the year, it’s I think it what is it at the moment they’re calling it, it’s either you heat or you eat. And so that’s very sad, you know, where they’ve got to choose between heating and eating, and or paying their rent.
Tony: (08:31)
So you saw a need for this to happen in this area?
Carolyn:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Tony:
‘Cause it’s it’s considered generally a fairly affluent area.
Carolyn:
It is.
Tony:
So can we talk a bit about that?
Carolyn: (08:43)
Absolutely. So it is considered an affluent area, which means that also that the rents, the houses are much more expensive. The rents are more expensive. A lot of people are getting out of their rentals because of, you know, they’re not able to to keep them or they’ve chosen to move on, so we yeah, we we’ve had women living in their cars in in Drysdale li around the lake.
We’ve had we know of a number of women who house sit and and pets sit and that’s how they get around saying that they’re not homeless. we have women that, you know, couch left and we have women that live in public toilets over night time. During the day they walk around you wouldn’t know, but over night time they go get their bags they’re hidden and they’ll go and stay in the public toilets. Usually the disabled toilets because the doors go down to the ground and people can’t get in. Very sad. Very sad. But it’s true. It’s it’s happening. It’s happening right here on the Bellarine Peninsula and it’s really sad.
Tony: (09:55)
It’s a real eye opener now saying that. Yeah. What is your dream for the ideal situations for those women?
Carolyn: (09:57)
Yeah. The ideal situation we’d focus is really on putting together a project where we have five, not tiny houses, but small homes like these, maybe a little bigger than these because these are long term, that women can actually go in and rent affordably. We would only take 30 per cent of whatever income they have, whether that be a pension or whether they have part-time jobs. Five of them on a small block of land.
And with a you know, with a a meeting room, whether that be a shed that we could deck out so that they could meet together and have some sort of collective place to be. with a little veggie garden, somewhere that’s close to transport, so as they can as they’re ageing then don’t have a car and a lot of them can’t afford cars anyway. And they’re close to supermarkets and things like that.
So yeah, it creates a community for them, a sense of belonging as well. It’s… The result is that it is a community within a community. So a small community when it that supports each other. and that’s isolation is very hard. These women feel very ashamed of what’s happened to them even though no fault of their own. It’s very sad that we still have this view in society that homelessness means that they’ve either been alcoholics or drug addicts, or they’ve done something wrong, which is not the case. It’s not the case.,
Liz Bonner: (11:35)
Hi, I’m Liz Bonner from Cloverdale Community Centre. I’m really proud to be here today to see a dream become a reality. So for us at Cloverdale Community Centre, we’re a learn local provider and we believe that learning has more meaning when you’ve had a rough start in education when it’s grounded in the context of something real and meaningful. So we look for projects and partners that presents something that creates social change, something that people who participate in our learning can be proud of.
So when Robert came to us with this idea of building tiny homes, we were really excited because that’s an issue that our community has identified as being an area of concern. So we’re based in Corio in the northern suburbs of Geelong, and we’ve got an industrial shed, and we became sort of natural partners to Robert. So our dream from this point of seeing a finished product is to revisit our partnership and reintegrate the making of the panels, the frames, for community.
So someone who’s interested in a pathway into construction that might not have had a great opportunity at school, that they now can come and do something that’s meaningful, real, contributes significantly to community and hopefully inspires them. But they’re also got something to put in a portfolio that shows that they can do something that is real. So we think this is a really like sometimes you’ve got to go backwards and forwards in an idea before you land somewhere.
So we’ve tried doing a prototype at Cloverdale. That was great. But I think we needed to see a finished product to really sell what it is that Robert’s vision is and and our vision in partnership is. So we’re really excited for that.
I think when I’ve walked into the garden the first thing that struck me is there didn’t need to be destruction of existing landscapes to build this house. That’s what’s innovative about this model of build. So you don’t need to cut, you don’t need to destroy, you can create something that fits within an environment sensitively. So for me it looked like it was always meant to be here, not something that was added in as an afterthought. And I think that’s the true innovation of this model of build, where you bring in panels one at a time through a small space, not cranes and destruction. so for me that’s the bit the first bit that struck me is that it felt like it was a part of this environment.
I think the idea that it can be adaptable. Like what you need is what this model can present. It can be as fancy or as simple, as integrated into infrastructure or independent as you as a builder wants it to be. And I think that to me is sensitive to a whole lot of factors. So environment, financial sustainability, unique family , you know, what you can afford. Like what and it can be adapted, so, and then it can be removed. I think that’s the other thing. It it can it can leave the same way as it as it came in. So there’s a lot going for this model, but the big bit that hit me was just how naturally it felt in the space. Like it it feels like it belongs here. Certainly looks like that.
Tony:
Can you talk a little bit about the community in which you work and the maybe the special…?
Liz: (15:31)
Yeah, so Corio-Norlane is not just one of Geelong’s most disadvantaged postcodes. It’s one of Victoria Australia’s most disadvantaged postcodes. And that disadvantage sort of hides in plain sight. It’s a very proud community. It’s a community that has built the nation, honestly. So you’ve got a really strong manufacturing background and for us it feels very very right. It feels right that we honour that history of manufacturing. So finding projects like this one is what we’re about.
So everything that we do within our Learn Local program and Learn Local is a unique Victorian government funded adult community further education model that I think is not enough people know about it and the power for transformative change in people’s lives. So we look for things that not just help teach people things but actually help transform and transition them into prosperity. So our whole underpinning philosophy is that poverty is not a financial issue, it’s a resource and opportunity issue it’s a community connection issue.
So the opposite of poverty in our world is community and that was something I learned overseas talking to a beautiful Canadian mayor who challenged me and he said, you know, what’s the opposite of poverty? And I, big question. And he goes, it’s community. It’s connection. It’s resourcing. It’s seeing value in each other and sharing. So we also believe in a well being economy and we want to teach people that community controlled capital, that capital that community can use for whatever it needs is what will bring about transformation.
Community development under government or philanthropic control is not truly community development. So in doing projects like this, if we can raise revenue that builds community-controlled capital, then the Corio-Norlane community can do what it needs to do to transform and address the disadvantage, bridge the gap, not what other institutions think we should do.
(18:00)
That’s exciting.
Liz: (18:02)
I think it’s possible. Like, it’s absolutely possible. I’ve been to Bilbao in Spain, in the Basque region of Spain. Not only has Bilbao kept its cultural heritage, which was for me incredibly moving given the First Nations story in Australia, a small group of people had a vision for something much bigger and they’ve transformed the economy of that whole region.
So the whole standard of living in Bilbao lifted because of worker-owned cooperatives. So my sort of vision, and I’ll have to talk to Robert about this, is imagine we created a worker-owned cooperative that built these tiny homes and every worker was an owner and that every owner had a say in the direction of the business and that collective prosperity narrative like was seen in Bilbao, was possible in Geelong. And I do believe it’s possible, then we truly transform the living in a like someone living in that in that it would be amazing.
For me this idea that we are allowing an extractive elite to make the decision for us, the mass, and you know like the rise of Pauline Hanson and knowing Pauline Hanson’s best mates, Gina Reinhardt, like that that’s a very deliberate relationship that’s not about my benefit.
It’s about her wealth. And so we need to start challenging those things. We need to start asking big questions about policy and we need to look at history of how our our political leaders have voted for things that you know are in our favour. So we’re very big around the 25 per cent gas tax, returning wealth to community. Because every day I’m working with people in increasing distress who are not getting a share of the resources and who were the builders of our nation, who made all the things that we take for granted, so we want to see a return to that prosperity because Corio/ Norlane was not always a poor community. That’s a relatively new history.
Tony: (20:29)
And that did to a large extent… you did rely on Ford. What impact did its closing down have?
Liz: (20:34)
I think manufacturing and and like I’ve been to Detroit as well and there’s a similar history there, where manufacturing in certain areas takes off and then it slumps. And so you build these communities around industry and I mean we’re we’re a softer version of the Detroit story. The Detroit story is quite in your face. So going to Detroit, they’ve got urban blight, 2.2 million people reduced to the size of a town, Geelong, but that land mass, all of that destruction and decay. We’ve got that still got that social erosion that’s happened, but not that physical blight. And so you’ve got Ford, Harvester.
But just manufacturing generally and then you’ve got automation and you’ve got a a shift from valuing the people that work in in it. So it’s a it’s a profit over people model. And we’re saying there’s a scale of economy too. And one thing that we believe at Cloverdale is that there’s a micro-economy out of manufacturing. So we support artisans and we’re building a retail space at the shed that we make the panels as well where we want to sell on behalf of community artisans and at using a commission so the community centre benefits, those artisans benefit. And 20 dollars more in your family’s wallet right now is better than nothing.
So we can I think we’ve got to look at different scales of economy, not just what the government focuses on, which is this large scale, and return to some simple sort of models where if I can get someone in my community to make what I need, I might pay a little bit more, but I’m gonna get a better quality product and I’m going to get a much better social or community outcome. So we’re really pushing towards like we’re serious about a wellbeing economy at Cloverdale. Like our community said strategically end poverty, end hunger.
We want better health and well being and we want quality education. We mean business. We’re gonna we’re gonna listen and do.
Robert: (23:24)
This tiny house is built in the backyard of a property. And it was had to fit the the site and it had to be engineered and it had to a building permit and it’s got all the bells and whistles as far as all the regulations. So this is the inside and there’s a nice kitchen made that’s situated so it faces to the north, so we get a nice lot of sun coming into the tiny house. There’s an area right adjacent to the kitchen that’s large enough to have a foldout bed, so it can be a lounge, but if you’ve got a visitor plenty of room there and then down this other end.
Here is a bathroom which is big enough for having a shower, toilet and hand basin and if you come come right in… It’s… as you can see – that it’s all finished off nicely, so it’s easy to clean and it’s serviceable.
The bedroom area is up this end and it could be slightly bigger but in this situation it was this size because it’s a single person and also there’s a restriction on where we could build it but it could easily be another metre longer, a metre and a half and then it’d be a double bed.
So that’s about all. There is made for the outside’s… got a ramp which is for wheelchair access. And it’s got a nice little deck area for person to sit in. So it’s a very comfortable little house.
Libby Coker, Federal Member for Corangamite: (25:18)
It is really lovely to come today and see a community that has come together to look at in a, you know – from little things big things grow – to consider how do we provide housing for people who really need it, for our most vulnerable in the community, but also for women perhaps over 55 who are at risk of homelessness.
I’ve just had a look through this little house, and it’s fantastic. It would make a lovely, comfortable space and it’s surrounded by a beautiful garden and it has potential. So I think that it’s good to see that communities are actually trying to help themselves in building structures that can end up being really comfortable small homes for people who really need it and there is a focus on women and family because at the moment it is challenging to get a home.
So congratulations on the initiative here today and I know that you’ve got other plans and good luck with those. I know that you have… Cloverdale Community Centre’s been involved, and that there is also a very much a need to support women and families, away from family violence, women who are older, as I said, facing homelessness, opportunities for them to get the housing they need. So great project and well done!
Robert: (27:01)
Here’s as an example of what we’re talking about tiny homes. This is a property that could be purchased and would be large enough to put three or four possibly tiny homes with off-street parking and it just needs to be jigged a bit, but is ideal. So yeah it’d be it’s worth looking at.
Tony: (27:23)
What makes it ideal though?
Robert: (27:25)
Well, it’s ideal because is of the size, it’s well over 600 square metres and so it gives every tiny home enough space where they can have a garden, they can park the car, and they’ve got their own independence. So whether you’d develop it and it’d be subdivided or whether it would be a community housing project, it’s to be seen how it would be approached.
[Guitar music]
. . .
Tony: (28:14)
Yeah, that day was really positive, Mik. There were more people there than I expected. And just a really good vibe that people were part of something part of the solution, I guess, part of something special.
Mik: (28:31)
One woman told me: ‘That was like a moment in paradise!’ Well, that was a big compliment to Robert Patterson and the owner of that little tiny house there. It was a a touching moment also when Libby Coker had a good yarn, you could say, with the person who was going to live in the tiny house.
Colin: (28:51)
Look, clearly from what we’ve heard, tiny houses are a far, far better option than even caravans and units that are built on caravan sites, because they’re much more appreciated by the people who live in them. And so it makes me wonder why we just don’t have a tiny house building program that’s done you know, why the building companies themselves don’t buy up house blocks, empty house blocks, and put four or five tiny houses on it. Clearly there’s a demand for it, but at the moment it’s only sort of enthusiasts that are doing it in space that they can find. It’s… if you like a niche market and we it should be much more mainstream, shouldn’t it?
Mik: (29:46)
Yeah. It all boils down to money as usual. And the people who are going to live in these tiny houses don’t have much money. That’s the problem to begin with. But there are different economic models, how you can set up for instance if you have three tiny houses in one on one lot, then there are other ways of of constructing you could say like creating an association that runs that place.
So the people who live there actually just pay a tiny rent for their tiny house. And that construction is I think what needs to be explored and developed much more. I think in Denmark we are quite a bit a bit further with that. You see lots of different models where people share housing. Here in Australia everything is set for that.
Colin: (30:40)
Yeah. Well you would think that at the moment we have a housing crisis. We have a huge demand for low cost housing and it seems our authorities are unable to even find a way of meeting it. You would think that the tiny house movement, especially with as you pointed out, Libby Coker was there. She’s a Member of Parliament. You would think that she might suggest that to her own housing minister. But it still seems to be a strange movement that works with only the locals putting up show events like the one that you attended.
Mik: (31:26)
These are early days, Colin. I think that we’ll see more of this and there’s more things coming. And I know for instance that Robert Patterson is working hard on exactly what I was talking about before, creating an economic model for this. One that for instance politicians also can see how they can contribute to. So it it’s all about finding ways of making it clear how it would work. This is again a a question of storytelling. It’s about telling the story in the right way, so that it becomes clear that this is an obvious way to do things.
Tony: (32:04)
No problem about funding the money, just fewer concessions to the fossil fuel industry, more taxes for the fossil fuel industry. And yeah, it’s just again, Mik, it’s like you say: what story, you know, what kind of future do we want? Do we want a future where we rely on armaments that kill people? Or do we want to, are we going to solve this climate crisis?
Mik: (32:32)
Exactly.
Tony: (32:32)
And yeah, the politicians certainly get a choice, get an opportunity, so there’s no reason why this couldn’t be turned into like this project that Robert’s involved in couldn’t get taken to caucus and spoken to as about one of the solutions, if they’re fair dinkum about finding the solutions. It’s not always obvious that they are. They’d rather just talk about it.
Colin:
I’d like to sort of extend it a bit. I’d like to see a time in the future where you get small estates of tiny houses and they would appeal to the people who are currently living in caravan sites. Because we know that there are permanent residents in just about every caravan site.
If you make the tiny houses at a low cost, enough for the people to as people that we have. That the apparently nothing is able to be done for the homeless people. We just walk past them in doorways.
Mik: (33:51)
And the numbers are staggering. It’s something like 150,000 people at this point in time in Australia that are homeless. One hundred and fifty thousand people!
Tony: (34:02)
Now the tiny homes movement would attract people who are currently living in caravan sites and if caravan sites became the place where homeless people went to each evening to get a meal and a bed, we could solve two crises with one go.
Mik: (34:24)
Speaking of storytelling, it’s been a while since we heard any news from our roving reporter Rusty, who is always good for a story. And I have some news there for you and for our listeners, because I had a chat with Rusty the other day and it was actually a private chat and we were talking about dogs and how I feed my dog and how he feeds his dogs and so on. But I think a really good story in a way came out of it. So I asked him to record it.
And I think we should listen to it, but before that I also want to include a disclaimer here because I know we have listeners who don’t think that talking about meat is suitable for a sustainability program like ours. We should be talking, you know, vegan and climate friendly and so on. The main issue for Rusty is that he’s looking for meat that’s chemical free. When you’re shopping for meat at a butcher, and this is what I think the real story is from Rusty here, it’s not only just about the meat. So anyway, last time we heard from Rusty he was in the midst of a flood. So here’s an update:
. . .
Rusty: (35:31)
Well, I was in the Hunter Valley and it was when I first went in, ’cause I was there about six weeks, it was dry, dry, dry, dry, including the farmers were buying in those great big round hay bales. And when two truckloads go into the farm next door you start worrying. But the rain started and then it greened up nicely. But I’m back home and I came back and we had to then navigate the death of the butcher in the village. That was sad news, but I attended the funeral and it was a big turnout. Like for a village that’s only got 550 people in it, there were probably eight hundred at the funeral and probably drop down a bit for the wake. probably three hundred because people’ve got to get on with their lives and school pickups or whatever.
But I sort of reflected for a little while. it wasn’t said at the wake, but the next morning we got told that there’s no one to go into the shop, no one to take over, and it’s gonna close. And and I reflected back and I remember the first time when I arrived in the area and I walked into the butcher shop and did my normal questions. Where does the meat come from? Let’s focus on beef.
So he said, That’s good because that’s the easy one. He told me where it which properties they came off. I didn’t particularly know the people, but I said, Are they chemical free? Yes. They’re grass fed. They’re not from a feedlot? No. So that then meant pretty safe to purchase here and you know, it’s just so much easier. The village isn’t you know, we’re on the edge of the village, it’s easy to wander down instead of the 30-odd kilometre one way drive into the regional town. So that was fun.
I continued getting my meat there. I was told that he got ox hearts in, which aren’t ox, they’re actually cows, but we call ox hearts in for the dogs. And I remember one time I went in there after buying it several times it was all minced up. So I wanted him with my ice cream containers that I retained, stick on the counter and he just goes to the back and fills them.
And one time I asked him, Does it come in minced? He said, No, it comes in whole and I mince it. And I said, Would I be able to eat this? He said, Certainly. And he gave me his mother’s recipe. And I so I didn’t that time, but the next time I cut my or you know, I got my normal quantity.
Then I said, Well, next time can I have the oxhearts, or a couple of oxhearts that I’ll bake how you said? This is basically very similar to how you do stuffed capsicums. I saved a few pennies because it’s they’re what do you call You know, they’re only six dollars a kilo. And that’s you know, costs of leaving bite for all people. It’s it’s an interesting alternative. You know. And and so there was a relationship built. Like most of butchers I know, they’re always up for a chat. And he’d been in the area all his life.
So, you know, he knew people. When I wanted to know something one time I said, Someone’s talked to me about this lady, Lorna. I don’t and I was vague and I didn’t know. Well just go down to the to opshop. She’s usually there on a Wednesday. I said, okay. So he was a source of me trying to blend in. Also, while you’re in his shop, there would be other people. Again, you stand there waiting for well, you’re standing in line waiting or something, and you start chatting to people. So I got to know some locals. You know, that’s pretty important. Find out who know, you start and do connections. If I want something well that well, that’s a bad example, but I’ll use it, if I wanted something fixed then maybe I could go and see Harry.
So, you know, this all helps. And you’re keeping the money local too because, you know, it’s not leaking out to bigger cities like Newcastle. So, you know, there’s a bit of a rapport there. He understands, you know, sort of a decent bloke.
So back to the tragedy really of losing not only are you losing a person, you’re losing social coherence. So that’s fairly important. The next day when I heard about the closure of the shop and not opening, reality set in. What about the dog’s food? Where am I gonna get that now? So we started the search and fortunately I remembered some friends that were over the big hill from here and I rang and said, Didn’t there used to be a pet processing place near you? Yes, it’s just up the road. I said, Give me the number.
So I rang them and they said, Yeah, no problem delivering. We actually do a large looped every fortnight and we can deliver on basically on what would be on our way back. We do villages either side of you and we can do that. So you have to place your water. Blah, blah, blah.
And the interesting thing during that conversation was I could get the ox hearts. How do I want them? Mince, thank you. they were talked about off cuts from the cattle, the beef. We mince that as well. Okay, we’ll try that. And then he said, It’s going to the dogs. Have you ever given them deer? So I thought about it, and my mind immediately went to the feral deer problem.
Well the feral problem in the whole of Australia goats, pigs, camels, donkeys, whatever the rest are. And I thought, well I know there’s a real problem with the spread of feral deer spreading along the Great Dividing Range, which I referred to as the Big Hill. And I thought we should try that.
It sounds like I can contribute in a small way to be able to offer some form of control.
In a very small way. But you know, if we all thought about it, maybe we could get the problem. Now, these are ferals, so they can’t they’re not possible for human consumption. You have to get the source has to be the deer farms that still exist. So that was fine. We’ve overcome a few things while we’re waiting for that, which was the next week.
I think there’s only about 500 ways you can feed a dog. So I will tell you my way. You can make your own choice. I mentioned the ox hearts, which come in minced. To that we add blanched rice. My dogs are fussy. I think they’ve been talking to chefs, so they only want seasonal veg from the patch. Then we take the egg shells that we we’ve consumed smash them up and add that, it’s basically calcium. Then when we’ve got the abundance of eggs that our chooks produce, they’ll get that added. Real abundance they get two into the with the kilo of oxhearts. Now in our case we actually then put it in little containers as we weigh it because the dogs are getting on a bit, we don’t want to put on extra weight.
So I said the ox hearts for six dollars a kilo, but we’re also adding, well in our case, cheap ingredients. Yes, we have to buy the rice. But cheap ingredients that we’ve got ourselves. So it works out quite a decent meal and they’re very healthy. They run around, their coats look good. So, you know, as I said, people can decide for themselves.
But even if you were considering it, Mik, I’d give one caution for Joey. He’s a bit old to be changing his diet. Now, I would start him out on the moment that you’re able to feed him solids when you get the dog. I wouldn’t change it part way through. These dogs have been fed this all of their life. So you know, you don’t want to make sudden changes. Which is sort of what I was looking at if I couldn’t have sourced this place because I didn’t want to buy some of the off the shelf dog foods that are floating around. And I won’t go down that path either because that’s been set on the program before. And yeah, so I avoid those. But fortunately I was able to fix it quite quickly because one of the things we do have is I we got a dog freezer and a dog fridge in the shed.
So there was already some food in there and they were able to last that week gap that I had. So in the meantime, we go on to problem number two, my meat. So I’ve got no other i idea l locally of where to get my chemical free grass fed beef. I know a couple of places of other people’s but they’re little way away from here. And when I’m near there I pick up some whether I’m going out or coming back.
So it started, but in the meantime I have to go to the supermarket. And you don’t even ask where that comes from. It’s you’re not gonna get get the answer from a store even a store manager probably doesn’t know. I had some stuff in the freezer and things, but still, you know, eventually I had to go into the regional town. I knew there were some butchers in there, one claimed to be a wholesale and something else and something else. So first normal butcher shop I went to failed. I don’t think he even understood my questions, let alone being able to answer Or he didn’t want to because he didn’t want to. Who knows?
I went to another, the wholesaler one, and he was a little bit more helpful, but he was saying basically not currently. And I wasn’t sure whether he was wanting for me to just order and get out of the shop or what or out of the warehouse type thing. But that’s fine. I just chose not to. So I think really you know, there’s a little bit of worry about my health. I’m not you know, I’m getting on a bit.
I think well I put some of my I don’t have any health issues at my age, which is over seventy, and I put it down to being me watching what I eat. Some people might say pedantic, but it’s my health. I don’t care what other people say. I’m trying to guard my health. And I think that’s one of the reasons, as I said, that I don’t have any health issues. You know, people of my age, generally on ten tablets a day.
Okay, so the worry about the chemicals entering my health and my food and the chemicals entering the food chain. So unfortunately, Mik, the search goes on. And I’ll let you know.
. . .
Colin: (48:19)
Look, I… as you know, Mik, or many people don’t know, that I actually trained as a young man as a butcher. And I’m very much aware that the dog food industry it’s almost sort of window dressing. What the dog food companies do is buy up all of the unused material from slaughterhouses and they mince it all up and then reconstitute it to make it look like chunks of beef. In truth it’s absolute rubbish. It’s hooves and ears and bones and and the meat that wasn’t seen fit for human consumption.
And the amazing thing is that most of the dog and cat food companies are owned by big multi-country conglomerates. Mars, the sweet company, the American chocolate bar company, owns most of the big brands like Pal and Whiskas. And they have factories which just take junk. And and animals that are shot and animals that are put down, and they turn it into beefy looking chunks that satisfy the owners of pets ’cause they think that they’re giving them really top class meat. In truth it’s reconstituted offcuts, or not even offcuts, it’s reconstituted junk.
Mik: (50:05)
If there’s one inspiration that I took with me from Rust’s story here, it is this thing that you can do a lot more when you cook for your dog yourself. You know, when you get the raw ingredients and you mix things. And then you can put it in small containers and have it. So you don’t have to stand and cook every day. You can do it like for a week. Yeah. and that in that way you know that whatever you’re giving your dog is chemical free. It’s going to your dog who is going to benefit from it in the long run.
Colin: (50:35)
Yep. And look I don’t have a dog anymore. but when I did have a dog I fed him I did exactly that. and I took on board the fact that Australians don’t like offal very much and so the cheapest meats and the cheapest protein in the butchers and and the supermarkets is things like chicken livers and and well, lamb fry, offal.
And so I’d boil that up with oats into a porridge and knock up a week’s worth that you kept in the fridge and I don’t take things to the extent that Rusty does by going up and checking whether whether the oats were grown chemically free or whether the chickens were chemically free, ’cause I don’t think that they will be able to tell you in the butchers.
I do know that when I was a butcher, the customer is always right and they’ll always say, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ It’s: ‘Of course it’s what you want’. ‘Yes, we only ever buy chemically free beef.’
Nowadays it is possible because they they track every beast, and so you can find out whether that animal was used on a farm that doesn’t use chemicals, but I’m not sure that would cover for pet food. Hm. I don’t see how even the butcher can say, yeah, look, all of this that we’re selling you, this ox heart comes from an animal that was raised on chemically free grass. But there you go. His butcher says it, so he believes it.
Jingle
Mik: (52:28)
Now, that’s all we could fit in one tiny home and dog food influenced Sustainable Hour. And that brings us to the Be-section and we don’t have our guests with us in the studio here, so Colin and Tony, what should we be what should our listeners be?
Colin: (52:48)
I’m gonna go back to my roundup for the week and I’m gonna say: Be peaceful! Don’t be warlike. It is not going to help the planet in one way or another. Anyway, be at peace!
Tony:
Yeah, just be open, I guess that’s one we could say for most weeks. Just listen, observe, be educated and yeah, act! Do no harm in your actions.
Mik: (53:19)
I agree. And can I, inspired by, you know, my new book, Man of Earth, suggest that we should also be gentle. Be a gentle man – and woman.
. . .
SONG (53:33)
‘I Heard It on The Sustainable Hour’
Verse 1:
I woke up feeling like the world’s on fire,
Storms are rising, rivers running drier.
But then I tuned in, turned the dial,
And found a reason to stay inspired.
Pre-Chorus:
They said, “The greatest threat is thinking someone else will do it.”
But I can feel the change – I know we’re moving through it.
Chorus:
I heard it on The Sustainable Hour –
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Stand up, speak out, let’s build our power,
Be the difference – we know how.
Verse 2:
They talk of profits, pipelines, and delay,
But we’ve got voices that won’t fade away.
From city streets to the coastal sand,
We’re backing leaders who take a stand.
Pre-Chorus:
They said, “A society grows great when we plant trees in whose shade we may never sit.”
So let’s rise up, this is it.
Chorus:
I heard it on The Sustainable Hour –
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Stand up, speak out, let’s build our power,
Be the difference – we know how.
Bridge:
We are the voices, we are the wave,
Lifting each other, brave and unafraid.
It’s not too late, don’t wait for someday,
Together we’ll light the way.
Final Chorus:
We heard it on The Sustainable Hour –
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Rise up, reach out, this is our power,
Be the difference – we know how!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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