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[music playing]

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We now face an existential crisis

that may bring humancivilization to an end.

This needs a whole-of-society effort

to try and resolve it.

Our current system is a planet-killing Ponzi scheme.

It's a giant casino of absolutely epic proportions.

The consumer way very easily debauches.

I think we are losing the sense of community in many ways.

They need to learn about these fundamentals of a deeper

connection to one another and to nature.

Maybe there's another option.

Maybe there's another way to live,

which isn't the way that I have grown up with or become

accustomed to or just fallen into.

[music playing]

The story of industrial civilization tells us that

limitless economic growth, advanced technology,

material affluence are the pathways to prosperity.

But as we reflect on the world today,

it is clear that this is failing both people and planet.

We know this in our heads and feel it in our hearts.

And, yet, it seems we have not found a new story

by which to live.

We are the generation in between stories,

desperately clinging to yesterday's, but uncertain

of tomorrow's.

But then again, perhaps the story is already with us.

Perhaps we just need to live it into existence.

[crickets, birds]

[music playing]

I came because I was looking for a way to simplify my life.

I knew that the way that I was living my life wasn't right.

And the things that seemed necessary to strive for

weren't the things that I really wanted to strive for.

And I've always felt that.

Beautiful windows.

So I guess for the last five or six years,

I've sort of been paring back.

I just... yeah, I felt I didn't want to have debt.

I didn't want to...

I didn't want to feel obligated to work a 40-hour week

and not have time to do the things that really mattered to me.

So for the past year or so, I've been experimenting with,

I guess, living simply, living sustainably,

and trying to challenge myself to live in a way that is less

harmful towards the planet and less energy intensive.

I guess I feel like this experiment is an opportunity

to push myself a little bit further.

And challenge not only myself, but the modern environmental

movement to come to understand what it is to live sustainably.

I'm really looking forward to this year,

being part of a team, working together to explore what it

really means to live simply and sustainably,

to work towards living within the resources of one planet,

how we can just improve constantly.

And I'm really excited about sharing that beyond the group

here and beyond this place as much as we can.

The idea of this project really interested me

because I've been trying to apply these principles

in my own life in quite an individual way.

I haven't had much support from the wider

group of people I was with.

So the idea of coming here to be in a supportive learning

environment and to be meeting lots of new people

who are asking similar questions,

challenging things in a similar way, that what's excited me.

The idea of working as part of a larger movement.

I guess my interest in this project was to join with

like-minded people, learn some skills,

give my daughter the opportunity of living on a rural property,

being part of a documentary to educate and inspire others

to one-planet living, sustainable living.

So I was interested in this project because it provided me

the ability to put the theories of natural building and natural

food production into practice on a much bigger scale than

I'm able to do in cities and without actually buying any

land, because land is so expensive at the moment.

I've been studying permaculture for a long time.

But I'm excited to put into practice.

I want to have experiences.

And I want to be able to use my hands

and have knowledge from experience rather

than from books.

In terms of the existing infrastructure,

in addition to the house, there is a small earthship,

Cobb round house, some basic composting facilities,

and a moderately sized farm shed like.

My mother loved this place.

So much so that my sister and I spread her ashes here once

she passed away.

She is very much the seed for us in being

able to explore sustainable pathways for the property.

It was not long after this that I

was introduced to Samuel Alexander's book, "Entropia"

and realized that we were truly on the same page,

envisioning a simpler way.

I shared all this with the Gunai Kurnai land

and waters aboriginal corporations

cultural heritage manager about our small [inaudible] patch.

And Wurruk'an was born.

With permission to use Wurruk, a local indigenous word for earth

and story, infused with k'an, a Mayan term for seed.

We are beginning to build a tiny house.

It's about 2.7 by 3.6, and about 3 meters high,

so it's got a footprint of about 10 square meters.

We're trying to use as much reclaimed timber and reclaimed

iron as possible.

For the last two or three months,

I've been jumping into skits on the side of the road,

or jumping into people's backyards

when they tell me that they're renovating,

or going to the tip shop or salvage yards,

or finding windows on the side of the road.

We've got about 15 people here for the build over

in the next week.

And at the end of that build, I'm

hoping that we've more or less got

ourselves a beautiful, unconventional tiny house.

[music playing]

This is the tiny house that was built by a group of people

in when was it?

It was January, as well.

So it took about a week.

And then I had to install some of the ceiling

and a few other bits and pieces myself.

But it got finished in a week.

So this is the outside of the tiny house.

It's made out of pretty much nearly all recycled building materials.

So it's probably about, I would say, about 95%

all recycled building materials.

These weather boards are actually

skirting boards that we sanded down and varnished.

So I guess the main feature of the tiny house

is the geodesic window,

which our carpenter Nick made. It's beautiful.

He actually made the frame, and I cut all the glass

into the patterns.

First time cutting glass, and what do you know, it worked.

And then I made a candle holder for it and everything.

This makes it a really warm and beautiful space to be in.

And I look forward to many winter nights with candles.

Then we've got, like most tiny houses,

we've got a loft for either storage or a bed.

That's my bed up there.

It's got a really cute little window.

You can fit quite a lot of things into it a tiny house.

And to be honest, it's quite comfortable.

I've got my couch, my bed.

I've got a workstation as well.

This is my little desk, where I love doing designs from,

which is a really beautiful place to work.

I often work with the door open.

I've got a view down into the belly there.

I often work with a kerosene lamp, candles, sometimes

a head torch if it's getting a little bit too dark.

There's no power in the house, and that's

what I like about it.

I like to kind of go back to nature.

And it really gives you a feeling

of the fluctuations of the seasons and cycles of nature as well

I prefer to live in a tiny space.

I like to nest, and I don't think

that you miss out on much...

Much more than living in a conventional house

in quite a larger house, and that's

because, it makes you minimize.

And makes you realize how much you don't need, as well.

It makes you realize how functional a small space can be

In our modern society, we have usually the feeling

that bigger is better.

And I don't necessarily think that's the case.

I think that smaller is more cozy and more nourishing.

[music playing]

I grew up in quite a conventional way in a little

family in suburban England.

But my family had a really strong connection

to the natural world.

We'd often go for walks in the forest and along moors.

And I had a deep love of nature from a young age.

And when I was a teenager, I, through videos on the internet

and through publications, discovered the extent

of the ecological and social crisis happening in the world today

The deforestation.

The pollution of the oceans.

The toxic dumps.

Factory farming.

That really hit me very hard.

And I became really concerned about how we were living.

I had a deep sense that we shouldn't be going down

that track, but at the time, I had no idea

that there was an alternative.

What do we want?

Climate justice.

- When do we want it? - Now.

You can't produce an answer unless you name the problem accurately.

Unless we really understand the circumstances we're in,

we're not going to get the solutions

and find the path to it.

And I've seen, what I called, after Barbara Ehrenreich,

a lot of "brightsiding."

It's all happy clappy.

It's all good.

We're all going in the right direction.

There's renewable energy, sunflowers, all of this.

I think in part, some of that is a personal psychological

response of people wanting to talk about the good news,

because it allows them to go on.

But we have to deal with this problem as it really is.

And it is arresting.

And it is difficult. And to pretend otherwise...

To pretend it's going to be light and easy, that it's

going to be business as usual, with everybody

keep on making profit, and we don't have to change much.

To think like that actually means that we can't

get to the solution we need.

We need brutal reality in order to solve the problem.

Techno optimism in particular is really insidious.

It's about telling us we don't actually

have to change anything.

We can still have everything we have now,

so we don't really have to worry about any

of these pesky limits.

We will have everything we have now.

We'll just do it all in a green sort of way.

I think we have to have a recognition of the fact

that we are facing limits, and some sense of the relative time

frame for the different limits that we're facing.

Because then we know what we're trying to prepare for.

And we have an appropriate kind of sense of urgency

as to the need to do it.

I hope that by the end of the year,

I'll have a deep grounding in what it means to live simply,

and a greater confidence that this is in fact a way

of approaching life that it is deeply nourishing.

I believe it is, and the experiences I've had

so far tell me that it is something

that could be applied to lots of people's lives

for great benefit.

But I think the explorations of this year

will help give me confidence in communicating that message

and sharing it with a wide range of people.

I hope that by the end of the year,

these practical explorations will give me

greater clarity of my own values and vision

and how I see my life being a beautiful contribution

to the difficult times that we were in as a species.

I want my life to be a gesture towards a more

stable and loving world.

I guess I'm expecting this year to be difficult.

I'm expecting to...

Again, push simple living to its probably more extreme ends

and try and...

I mean, I know that it's going to be uncomfortable,

but I want to try and find out what my limits are and then

maybe pare it back to something that's

somewhere in between and more comfortable.

And I guess I've been doing that by myself for a little while

now, and I'm hoping to do that with a bunch of other people

that are interested in the same kind of thing.

And maybe we can work together, and as a community,

it might be more rewarding or more enjoyable

or even a bit easier.

And, yeah, I mean if you can extend that to the community

living, I guess it would be easy to extend

to a much broader society.

Oh, OK. No, it's not matching up anymore.

I spent the last eight years working in an office as a town

planner in a number of different roles, doing different things.

And in the end of those eight years,

I was actually partaking in projects

that I was very passionate about.

But the bulk of my work that was coming from up above,

from my bosses, was not something

I was proud or really fully passionate about.

So quitting my job and doing a bit of traveling and then

applying to be a part of this project

gave me the ability to remove myself from the daily grind,

I guess you could say.

And, you know, I found that once I built my salary up

over those eight years working from part time

to a full time senior employee in a local government,

I started spending that money on luxuries.

And since I've quit my job, it's been

nice to just strip all those things back and try and live

more simply with far less.

So over the year, I'm hoping that I'll

be able to construct some form of abode

on wheels for very little money, as I don't have much,

using recycled materials as much as I can.

I've always had sort of minor health issues,

and in my mid-30s they developed to a point where it was

necessary for me to really do something,

to really take responsibility for my health,

because I wasn't finding the medical profession helpful.

And I wasn't finding anything else that was helping me.

And so I started taking responsibility for my health.

And as I understood more about the way my body works,

and the importance of the food that I put in it,

and that food is medicine, and the importance of knowing where

your food comes from, and connecting with your food,

the more interested I became in soil and in gardening,

which I'd never really...

I mean, I'd always been a city girl.

I never really knew how a strawberry grew.

Wouldn't have recognized half the plants on my plate

if I'd seen them in the garden.

So those understandings led me to leave a desk job

that I loved, but which I realized wasn't healthy for me.

It wasn't good for me to sit at a desk for five days a week,

all day, every day.

It wasn't good for me mentally or physically or spiritually.

OK. So this is the Cobb cabin.

It was built in a workshop about a year and a half

before the project started.

It's... the walls are 30-centimeter thick Cobb,

which is sand, clay, and straw, and water.

And the floor is also Cobb.

There's not a lot to show in the Cobb cabin,

because I don't have...

I didn't come with a lot of things.

So I haven't got much in here, which I'm really loving.

I gave away or sold most of my things

before I came to Australia for this project, which was

a really liberating experience.

So, obviously, in the process of being here,

I've accumulated things, because that's what we do.

One thing I've done is make a bed from pallets.

There was some rocks left over from the build.

And some planks lying around.

So I made some shelves from rocks and planks.

I've got a little plastic solar-powered light, which

doesn't put out much light.

But it's... so I don't have any other form of power

in the cabin.

I'm not going to have any heating for winter.

The walls being 30-centimeter thick Cobb,

it's really well insulated.

So it's really cool in summer, and so far, it's

been really warm on cold days, but obviously, we're

not in the heart of winter, yet, so I don't

know how it's going to be. [laughter]

We need a certain level of material possessions to be

satisfied, but beyond that point,

which is surprisingly low, it's actually less about what we

have and more about the way we live,

and the way we treat others, and the way we feel ourselves to be

in relationship with the wider world.

And lots of beautiful writers spoke very clearly

about how people can find more satisfaction

in a less consumptive way, which at the same time,

makes us happier in the West.

And it also reduces the load that we're

putting on other people around the world who

don't have access to the wealth that we're taking from them.

So voluntary simplicity for me is

a very elegant way to both increase personal satisfaction

and sense of meaning and richness.

There's now a mountain of literature that...

It's overwhelmingly convincing that not only are there

savage limits to growth, but we've

gone through many of them, in the sense that it is now

utterly impossible for people to live

at anything like the standard of consumption

or environmental impact that we have in rich countries.

And yet the mainstream has virtually ignored that case.

The economy at the moment, despite all

those brilliant tech fix like the computerization

of everything, the resource use rates are going up

at a fearsome rate.

So if technical advance...

Technical fix... Is going to solve

our problems, what I want to know

is when's it going to start?

And it often seems to me that these debates about

our environment, our future, and then, you know,

an environmental future come down to almost a blind faith

in technology.

And I should say that by background, I'm a technologist.

I come from an applied physics background.

So, you know, I like what technology does for us,

but we have to be really careful about putting

so much faith in this factor.

Well, essentially, all human political systems exist

to extract wealth from the periphery and concentrate it at the center.

It's just that some of them do it a lot more effectively

or efficiently than others.

Capitalism does it extremely effectively.

So it's a very effective mechanism for sucking wealth

towards the center.

What you do is you create a Ponzi scheme, essentially.

You're sucking everything in.

But you constantly require larger and larger periphery

to suck it into in order to keep expanding

the capacity of the center.

And if you can't keep expanding, it

will collapse, like any Ponzi scheme.

So you have to keep reaching out further and further.

I don't necessarily think it's certain that

we're in for collapse or that it's happening now.

But I just think the evidence does

appear to be assembling and stacking up for

that it's likely that we may even

be in the early stages of a collapse mode right now.

It just makes sense to me to start to prepare,

and I suppose that that to me means expect...

Being more self-reliant.

[music playing]

We're using organic gardening practices.

So we're not using any pesticides.

We're not using any fungicides.

We're not using any chemical fertilizers,

anything like that.

It's mainly about trying to build soil in whatever we can.

Mostly with compost.

And mostly with manures.

Food is more than just fuel for the body.

It's... it's your connection to the land.

It's the most... food is the most intimate connection

to the land, because you interact

with four of the five senses, taste and texture

and smell and the sight.

So it's quite an amazing thing.

To be able to enjoy good food, fresh food, seasonal food,

real food, food that doesn't come out of a can or a package

and you mix water with it.

I don't understand this type of food.

The giant middlemen in the form of huge multinational

corporations and supermarket chains are not able to treat

farmers in a way that respects the absolute reality

and necessity of diversity.

These farmers have been pressured

to grow standard-size apples without a single blemish.

They have to fit the machinery... that

is the harvesting machinery, the washing machine,

the supermarket shelf, and the packaging.

The end result is we burn tons of food every year.

The end result is that the very research and development

at university is now concerned about transportability

and the looks of produce, not the nutritional value.

We don't know now when our food naturally grows.

We get watermelons in June in Victoria.

Like, watermelons don't grow in June in Victoria, you know.

And I think that's really disconnecting.

When you wait for something to grow in your garden,

it's a completely different feeling.

Because you've anticipated it.

You've cared for it.

It not only tastes delicious, but you've

got this kind of connection with it

that makes it taste even more delicious.

And the fact that you've waited for it all season.

So we get some of our food from the garden.

But during the winter, we haven't had as much coming in

from the garden.

So we get some vegetables from the [? Bora bora? ] Food Hub.

So we've been getting sacks of potatoes, and sacks of carrots,

and sacks of onions from them.

As well as garlic in bulk and things like butter and cheese.

They also do veggie boxes with a range of different vegetables

from the local area.

So we've been getting them as we've

progressed through the year.

Aside from that we get our dry goods and other food

from a variety of different places.

So we're aiming to source our food as locally, ethically,

and organically as possible, so we choose

which supplier we get different items from,

so that we're getting it from as close as possible

and grown in the best way possible for the environment.

Because to me, food consumption is a moral act.

It is also a political act.

And it is up to us, the consumer... or, I

like to call ourselves like the citizens,

not just consumer... to do something about it.

Because we can't wait for authorities or government to

do something about it.

We just have to do things.

It has to be from the bottom up.

My name is Hayden, and I build SuperAdobe domes and run workshops.

And I hope to do it full time and as a real job.

It's 3.6 meters in diameter, because that falls under the 10

square meter floor space that it needs

to be classified as a shed, so we don't actually

need a permit for it.

About 95% of the building material is earth.

We've got a really, really large pile of earth

that we've just pulled from the site here.

So, hopefully, if your soil is the right consistency,

you get to use a really, really large percentage of soil that's on your side.

So it's really, really local materials, really,

really cheap, and, yeah, really, really easy to build with.

[music playing]

Yeah, this is our composting toilet set up,

which we built over the course of a few weeks out

of a combination of salvaged wood, local cypress,

which makes these and some other material we found around

the place.

Some Hessian sacs from down the road.

It's a pretty simple system.

There's a urinal over on this side here

and a composting toilet on this side.

After we've finished using it, we put in a cup of sawdust,

just here from the local cypress mill,

and that just helps it to...

It balances the carbon and the nitrogen,

and it helps it to compost into a fertilizer.

So when we're done with the bin, when it's filled up

most of the way, we'll take it out

and put it in a holding bay with all our other bins.

And they'll sit for at least 300 days,

and we'll check on the compost after that time.

And during that time, they'll just

compost away, until eventually, they're

beautiful fertilizer for the garden.

We've used permaculture in the gardens where we're trying

to maximize diversity and make sure that there's a lot

of different kinds of plants around.

We're planting herbs and things like that, as well,

for integrated pest management.

Permaculture can be defined in many different ways.

But, basically, it stands for permanent agriculture,

first of all, and then permanent culture.

So the way I see it is it basically

is planning and designing for more permanent kinds

of systems.

Just like nature does really.

It's mimicking nature.

So it's utilizing design and careful research

and planning to ensure that you're

creating a self-cycling system that's regenerative

and produces no waste.

So permaculture is really a design system for both

sustainable land use and sustainable living.

And so it's addressing both the production

side of the conundrum and the consumption side, and saying,

I want to bring those things back together.

Where we eat food, why not...

We grow a garden.

Why don't we grow the food in the garden,

and integrate that whole?

Rather than the industrial system

which stretches everything out in these long supply chains.

So bring it back together.

And through that a whole lot of design principles

emerge that small-scale systems actually make more sense

than large-scale ones.

That you need a diversity rather than a monoculture.

And it's not just sustainable.

Sustainable is not nearly good enough.

What you need is not sustainable.

You need regenerative.

And that's exactly what permaculture provides you

the ability to do.

Rather than our extractive system, where we've constantly

been sucking resources out all the time and cannibalizing,

catabolizing our natural capital all the time.

Rather than doing that and leaving ourselves

less and less and less ability to produce and meet

our needs in the future, if you institute

a permaculture system, you're actually

rebuilding that natural capital.

Sustainability is a funny one.

Yeah.

I feel like it's a bit of a buzzword at the moment, sustaining.

Yeah.

I don't know what it is that you're

trying to sustain anyway, I mean,

when you think about sustainability,

it means, I guess, you can continue

doing what you're doing ongoing into the future, indefinitely.

But I just don't really think that there's

that much that we should be trying

to sustain at the moment.

We should be looking at solutions

that can improve the land over the long term

and can improve the lives of people.

But I don't think the rampant inequality

and the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the few

is something worth sustaining.

I think that's something worth destroying and challenging and replacing.

You're really answering what is a deep human need,

because that's how we evolved.

It's coming back onto a track that would allow life

to continue evolving.

That would allow for real progress.

The other path is suicidal.

It is... we are going to soon get to the point where,

localize or die, basically.

Because we cannot continue extinguishing species.

Cannot continue creating

frustration, fundamentalism, terror.

We cannot continue so blatantly

destroying any form of democracy.

Things are going to change, and I

think we will see that people are

waking up very, very rapidly to the benefits of localization.

This week, we're retrofitting our existing farm shed to be

a kitchen, lounge, and craft space.

We want a multifunctional large area

that can be converted to different uses

with portable bits of furniture.

So with the materials we're using,

we've sourced locally milled timber from a local sawmill.

And we are also using as many recycled materials as possible.

So we've got a bunch of floorboards and bits of iron

that we're going to use as cladding

for the internal space.

[music playing]

We're also going to be doing a recycled bottle

wall along the front of the building

here to let as much light in as possible.

And that's also going to feature some large glass

doors to bring the outside in and feature that beautiful view

we've got of the property.

There's so much waste these days of buildings

that are getting torn down or scraps of wood that

are left over from building jobs that we can divert

those resources from landfill and actually use them

in a meaningful way and be really

creative with just making something out of nothing.

[music playing]

We're here at the Wurruk'an kitchen, lounge room,

communal space, which we've been living in now for about three

or so months.

I guess the theme starts with our recycled timber.

These ones up top and on the side

here are oak floorboards that were left over

from a building project, and we were

able to get them very cheap.

We've got some recycled windows that there are a couple of sets

around the room.

So over here you can see we've used

a combination of corrugated iron and some hardwood fence pilings

that we were able to get for free from demolition.

We also scored some of this splash back stuff

around the sink and the oven, which is heat proof.

And, yeah, that was left over commercially,

and we were able to get it for free.

These beautiful bench tops.

Both these ones and the larger slabs came from a sawmill,

from Jed Wood.

We're very lucky to get their offcuts

and be able to actually use them with the help

of our professional carpenter

to get to this stage, which is really nice.

Up on the roof, we've actually had to use some plywood.

We were a bit short on materials to do the whole thing

with reclaimed stuff.

And there's also insulation and framing

behind all of these walls and the ceiling now.

So that insulation was also a bit of a compromise.

We bought that new as well, because that can be

pretty hard to find secondhand.

It's been really great to have a wood-fired stove to cook

on.

It feels a lot better than cooking with an electric stove

as we were before.

Just knowing that the source of energy

that we're using to cook with is a renewable source is better.

At the moment, we've used some offcuts

from building which have no other purpose.

And we've also some of our firewood from this property

and also from nearby forests in the way that is permitted.

So it's clear enough now that we need to transition swiftly

away from a fossil fuel energy economy to an economy based

on renewable energy, not only due to climate change,

but also because in coming years or decades,

fossil energy production will inevitably peak and decline.

But we can't just green the supply of our energy.

We also need to significantly reduce energy demand,

because there is no way that we can

run the globalized, energy intensive, consumer society

purely on renewable energy.

Yes, we need to transition to 100% renewable energy.

But that implies significantly reducing energy demand.

And it would be far easier, obviously,

to meet 100% renewable energy if we consumed much less energy.

So that should be our goal.

But given the close connection between energy and economy,

a society based solely on renewable energy

would have reduced energy supply,

and, therefore, would probably have

to go through a phase of planned economic contraction,

at least in the developed regions of the world.

So I think if we were successful in transitioning

to 100% renewable energy, we wouldn't

be able to live high-consumption, energy

intensive lifestyles.

We would need to aim for far more humble but sufficient

living standards.

The silver lining to consuming less is actually

consuming more of what we really want

and what we really long for.

And that includes handmade artisan products

that most people treasure much more

than some mass-produced product.

It includes more time to breathe, and to just

sing together, to dance together,

to make things together.

It's... there's a whole universe of things out there that we

could do right now without money,

but it requires the insight and the courage to connect

to others and to form groups where we can change the I

to a we.

[rooster crowing]

[music playing]

[singing] I rose up at the dawn of day.

Get thee away.

Get thee away.

Pray'st though for riches?

Away! Away!

This is the throne of Mammon grey.

Lunch is ready.

[singing] Said I, this sure is very odd.

I took to be the throne of God.

For everything besides I need is only the riches

that I can't leave.

I have mental joy and mental health.

I have mental friends and mental wealth.

I've got a girl I love and that loves me.

I've all but riches bodily.

In the praise of spirit night and day,

it never turns its face away.

The spirit by my side does stand and holds my money bag

in its hand.

You don't need that much in the way of material things

if you know that your neighbors have got your back and any time

you get overwhelmed by things, you can go next door

and there's someone whose shoulder you can cry on.

Or they can come to you.

Or someone who's tomatoes you can water.

Then they're coming and helping you fix your bike

or whatever it might be.

There are just so many advantages.

There are no disadvantages to building community.

And the potential advantages are absolutely massive.

So I think that's something we really, really need to focus on.

[singing] Getting, spending, we lay waste our powers.

Getting, spending, we lay waste our powers.

Getting, spending, we lay waste our powers.

Getting, spending, we lay waste our powers.

I think the benefits of living in a community reveal

themselves to you more and more each day.

There's the strict financial benefit

of being able to share in the costs of making

this transition.

And also the benefits of being able to draw on each other's

skills and attributes and knowledges.

So you don't have to do it alone.

You don't have to do it financially alone,

skills alone.

Some of those things are very intimidating for people

trying to make that step.

But... but more than that, it's about being...

Doing it together.

And what's possible here is possible

not just because of us as individuals,

but because when we get this unique collection

of individuals together, we're capable of so much

more than what we would be on our own.

Wow.

[cheering]

So we have to do one of two things.

We either just accept that we have no community at all.

We just have a casual neighborhood

and some nice acquaintances at work and perhaps a couple

of people we drink with at the pub.

Or we create community... Intentional community.

And I think that's the side that's

always interested me, personally,

as well as in my research.

Is how can people create intentional community?

Can you consciously do it?

I know people subconsciously do it all the time.

I mean, it's our natural position.

But can you actually do this?

Can you set out to create this thing?

That always fascinates me.

You're going to have to come up with some idea of how

you're going to make decisions.

Yes, we're going to have consensus.

And, yes, we're going to live lightly on the land.

And, yes, we're going to support each other.

And, yes, we'll look after each other's children and elderly

and all of that sort of stuff.

But it depends whether they have any experience with doing that.

I think the other thing is that we are losing so many

of those skills for living in community.

It's like, I know that I have to develop skills

in organic gardening if I'm going

to become an organic gardener.

I know that.

So, therefore, I also have to develop skills

in inter-human, interpersonal relationships

if I'm going to live in community.

Don't assume you're kind of born with that, because you weren't.

You have to learn how to cooperate

and how to put the group above the individual.

And that, that's very challenging.

It's been a lot of challenges.

Yeah, I'm not going to lie.

I think although we had to live the first few months

without much infrastructure, without a warm kitchen space,

without much of a lounge room, or without

a whole lot of running water.

And we had to... had a composting toilet that was sort of outside.

I don't think the infrastructure challenges were all that big.

I think there seemed to be a sense of solidarity

and like all doing it together, and that kind of

gave me a lot of comfort, knowing

that we're all kind of pulling through

and stronger because of it.

So I feel like the infrastructure challenges were

a little bit problematic, but, yeah, they

weren't as hard I think as the community challenges

that we faced when there was conflict in the community

and our conflict resolution processes around

that weren't fully developed.

So, yeah, I think I struggled a lot when things were not

going well, and people left, and things weren't fully resolved.

Or when there was substantial difference in the direction

that people wanted to take in the project.

Whether people wanted to build lots of infrastructure

or start practicing simple...

Simpler living.

I feel like those sort of chasms,

those divides were challenging for me because I didn't really

know where I sat

and didn't know how to bring the group back together again.

I wanted everyone to sort of start

working together again, but.

Obviously, starting a community from scratch with

people who don't really know each other at all and designing

a property and finishing buildings, houses,

and bits of infrastructure is very challenging in the context

of a one-year project.

So, yeah, that social aspect of just getting to know each other

and getting decision making processes in place

has been one of the key challenges.

Another major challenge I think has been the group figuring out

how to accommodate a wide range of people's styles

of voluntary simplicity.

It can be interpreted to differing degrees,

and there's not necessarily any right or wrong answers,

so just figuring out how the group can accommodate

the variety within our personal direction and preferences

has also been a challenging component

of that social side of things.

[music playing]

[singing] Let's look to the sun and the moon.

Civilization could have left soon.

No one knows if we'll get through.

But let them be beautiful and that much is true.

Humanity...

One of the humbling learnings I got from being here was how

difficult it is to be in community, and how, in a way,

we have to relearn that art.

That we have broken that long tradition of shared ritual

and song and mythology and living in one place

and knowing that history.

That's kind of been fragmented for us.

And when we now come together in groups,

it's much harder to find that common culture

to draw upon in times of discord and in times of confusion.

So it's easy for us to fragment back

into our individual desires and paths.

And I know that for lots of people as resources

become more scarce, and we have to rely on each other more,

there'll be positives to that, but there will also

be a lot of challenges.

So I'm very motivated now to keep practicing and developing

those skills of communication and conflict resolution.

Naming the difficulties.

Bringing up the emotional challenges.

And also celebrating together.

Creating,

relaxing,

learning how to play

and dance in a group, and it's a real...

It's the art of being human and the art of being together.

Yay!

Whee!

No way.

We've been living in a tent.

We were living in a tent at the start of the year.

And the tent was in a place where it

didn't get a whole lot of sun.

And as it started to rain a bit more coming into winter,

it didn't really dry out, so it started to get moldy.

So there was a bit of pressure on us to do something else.

And we decided that building a really small house

with recycled materials would be the simplest and most

economical way to do that.

And yeah.

So we did.

[music playing]

This beautiful structure behind us is the house that we

built over the course of about three months of pretty much

entirely recycled materials.

We had to make five purchases.

We bought some cement for the foundations, some steel bracing

tape because it was a bit wonky.

We bought some screws for the roof.

We bought...

Tub of wood glue.

A little tub of wood glue to make some window frames.

And what was the other thing we bought?

We bought chains to hold the windows open.

Hinges.

We bought... there's six things.

We bought some hinges as well.

But that's it.

Everything else is recycled materials

we got entirely for free.

Yeah, we went by dumpsters from demolition sites.

We looked on the website gumtree.

And we ended up getting pretty much everything

we needed to build the whole house just for free.

If we can demonstrate that it's possible to do

without 3 and 1/2 years of training

and without tens of thousands of dollars

to build a house that is going to be a lot better in terms

of its ecological footprint, then I

think that can kind of disperse that knowledge more

amongst the people that might not have the money

to take part in a more conventional sustainability movement.

So the total cost of the house is about $420

if you include the petrol money that went into it.

Yeah.

It's a lot more time consuming doing it for free,

but it's definitely worth it.

A lot more rewarding, I think.

Yeah.

So while I've been at Wurruk'an, I've been continuing

to work for eight hours a week, for publishing clients,

and that's enabled me to cover the small expenses that we have

at Wurruk'an.

So we've put $30 a week into the kitty, which

is the great benefit of living in a community,

that for $30 a week each, we've been able to pretty much

ourselves feed ourselves for the entire year.

And, obviously, all of us have little extras

that we like that weren't items that everybody wanted.

And so we've bought our own cheese or bread.

I think I'm right in saying that we've all

spent under $100 a week this year for basic living costs.

The borrower receives the full amount and pays it back,

plus interest.

Either way, the interest that it collects on loans

is one of the bank's principal sources of income.

Now Mr. Morton has obtained his loan.

He has increased his bank credit by nearly $2000.

But this credit was not transferred to him

from some other account, so where did it come from?

So currently, the existing monetary system, essentially,

has a growth imperative built into its structures,

because banks create money by loaning it into existence

as interest-bearing debt.

And in order for that debt to be paid back, plus the interest,

that implies an expansion of the monetary system.

So it needs growth for stability.

But we also know that growth is the driving

force behind our environmental problems.

So if we were to transition to a post-growth economy

as we need to do for environmental reasons,

this would require us to create a different type

of monetary and banking system.

One that wasn't so dependent on growth.

And I think there's is a huge amount that governments

can do to rein in the worst aspects

of the current monetary system, but perhaps a more promising

line of opposition, given that governments don't

seem to be doing much would be for individuals and households

to try to create new forms of economy.

Try to escape the existing monetary system

as far as possible.

And they could do this through things

like creating local currencies, local exchange networks,

and engaging in practices like barter and gift and sharing.

That would be... it's obviously so much easier for a community

to deal with a contracting economy

if communities and households shared the stuff that they had.

Well, you have to hug, too.

John, get in here.

No, I'm an observer at the moment.

[inaudible]

No.

[interposing voices]

Do you feel rejected?

You're about to go [inaudible].

He wanted to get up.

And so there was a long process of...

What felt like a long process of learning

to communicate with each other.

And it's immensely satisfying now

to feel that that process has actually

been really successful.

And to be living now with a community

of people who, when problems arise,

know how to work through them.

And I think we've actually been really successful

at making those...

at developing those communication skills.

And it's a nice feeling when we have a meeting,

and someone raises an issue, and you can see the change.

You can see the different way that people approach it.

You can see the different ways that people sort of

think about...

Respond to issues, especially if...

Where at the beginning of the year,

they might have felt a little bit attacked,

now they think through the reason for the issue coming up.

And, yeah, I think we're all much better at...

I mean, I think we're probably all in some way more mature

community dwellers.

Here he is.

Ready?

Rrrr.

Oh.

Ah, no.

Scary pumpkin.

It's an angry pumpkin.

It's a pumpkin head.

Aw, Ruby.

Living in such close quarters with other people as part

of our community, especially on quite a small scale,

where we all use the same lounge room and kitchen,

and there's you know, seven or eight of us in that same space

on a daily basis.

It certainly presents a lot of challenges on a personal

and a group level that are just inherent to human beings

and families and communities and all types

of human relationships.

So it's certainly been challenging.

But I know for myself, that's made

me look inward and examine my own

personal journey and where I'm at.

And how my own psychology is evolving

and just if you feel a bit down one day

or feel a bit anxious about how someone else is acting,

it's ended up kind of flipping around and making me examine

how I'm contributing to those sorts of dynamics

or social situations and just trying to learn

more about myself, I guess.

[singing happy birthday]

Hip hip hooray.

Hip hip hooray!

[inaudible]

Clap, Ruby.

Yeah.

[music playing]

So I'm going to be building my house in less than a week now.

I've got 14 people coming out to learn how to build

a tiny house on wheels.

And I've been gathering materials

for the last couple of months in Melbourne

and around the local area to build a tiny house on wheels

out of recycled material.

We've got a few rough plans, but being a tiny house,

it's quite easy to go with the flow.

And it being recycled materials, we have to adapt to that,

and it's going to be a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, I guess.

[music playing]

So there's a mighty, mighty benefit,

if you don't get trapped into working 20, 30,

40 years to pay the mortgage on your two big McMansions.

Boy, oh, boy, have you gained a lot of time and freedom

from worry to do other things.

And in the same world, we would be

able to build a very nice little house for, I reckon,

$10,000 at most.

And you can do it for less than that if you like.

And that's a perfectly adequate house.

Now, you've saved $400,000 there by the time

you've taken the payment of interest and loans

to the bank and tax on the money.

That's not negligible.

There is a benefit for moving to simpler ways.

So we're three days in to the workshop,

and it's going really well.

As you can see, we've got our full timber frame of the walls

up, and down the groups working really well together.

They're all learning off each other.

And Nick, our carpenter is doing a really great job.

So I feel very lucky to have everyone working so hard,

and we're on schedule.

I was really humbled by the goodwill, the energy,

and all of the contributions brought by everyone

who made it possible.

It was just an amazing week of everyone's energy

vibing and making this beautiful house possible.

And, you know, I've got a little bit left to do,

but I've basically had people come and build me a house

with the great intentions.

And we all learnt a whole lot.

And it couldn't have gone any better.

I'd say it was probably the best week of my life,

without a doubt.

[music playing]

There's a whole history of the sort of energy descent

ideas and permaculture being associated with a move

to the country.

A move to rural areas as a place that's a better place

to be more self-reliant.

And that still will may be true, but for most people,

there's both a necessity and an advantage

in looking at where they live already.

And for most Australians, that is

some sort of detached housing in what we call suburbia.

Whether that's in our capital cities

or whether it's in similar housing in our regional towns

and even villages like the one we

live in, that most people are living in those separate houses

on small blocks.

And what that template of living makes possible

is it's possible to incrementally adjust

what is happening there and provide a lot of people's needs

by growing food, by modifying the house to make

it less dependent on energy.

By harvesting some of the water.

And by using some of the space that

exists in our relatively large houses

to start doing more in the household economy.

Doing things for ourselves rather than depending on money.

One of the things that's most exciting about the intentional

communities movement now is that it's like we have right across

the landscape hundreds of experiments about how to live

in a way that confronts and resolves issues associated with

climate change and peak oil...

You know, environmental damage on a global scale.

Instead of just having a one-way solution, which just says,

this is the way that we have to go forward to resolve this.

Instead, we've got all of these little bubbles

of creative responses and new ways

of living and being together and building lives together.

Patterns of settlement, and patterns of production

that are popping up all across the landscape.

Each offering different pathways.

And it's almost like the...

As more of these emerge, we have more opportunities for resilience.

Ideally, I'd like to see more initiatives like this where

people with resources and land and spaces making them

available to allow passionate and enthusiastic people to live

more self-sufficiently and demonstrate through example

that there are other ways of doing things.

[humming]

So there is so much we can do right now without spending any

money to greatly enrich our lives.

And let's not be fooled by this idea

that we have so much choice in the modern economy.

And that our lives would be so limited if we were

to choose a different path.

We would have not even begun to explore the potential

for more diversified, localized ways of doing things.

There are reasons for pessimism, because it's a big,

big task, and we're in a lot of bother.

And we are not very far down the path

to the kind of consciousness that we need.

But there are a lot of strong reasons for optimism.

One is that the vision of an alternative way is, I think,

so attractive.

It's what keeps me going.

And it's so easily done.

We could do it in weeks if we wanted to.

It's about moving to ways that would liberate all of us.

You don't want to wait until you have absolutely no choice.

So I would say, it's a bit like we're

standing the edge of a cliff, and we're going over the edge.

Like it or not, we're going over the edge.

That's not up for debate.

So what are you going to do?

Are you going to stand on the edge of that cliff

and wait for someone to shove you off?

Or are you going to put on your parachute and jump?

Because not that base jumping is without its risks,

but it's a lot less risky than going over

the edge without a parachute.

So let's not think of it as good guys and bad guys.

And let's not believe for a minute

that the way we'll change it is by getting some good guys to go

into those large structures.

Let's look systemically at how we

can shift towards smaller structures with more holistic

knowledge underpinnings.

And that really is the localizing part.

When you know how to live simply,

the sense of freedom can be just overwhelming.

There's nothing as addictive as freedom.

And there's nothing as attractive either.

So I think if we find the right way

to explain our ideas to people and explain the ideas that

are fundamentally workable in the first place,

then there is so much that can be achieved.

There's no need to despair.

I came to Wurruk'an wanting to explore a really radical

form of voluntary simplicity, because I felt a real sense

of urgency around the various crises that the world is facing

at the moment.

And radical simplicity seems to me

to be the best and most logical response.

After the experiences here of living

in community and despite all of the challenges,

I feel really strongly that this is

the right way for me to live.

So, yeah, my intention is to return to New Zealand and find

or found a community.

And in the long term, I'm really hoping

to live in a community that operates in a gift economy.

That feels like a right and responsible way to live

or thing to work towards.

The person I was at the start of the year is vastly different

to the person I am at the end of the year,

as I would hope would be the case for every other year

for the rest of my life.

My plans for the future extends as far as I should probably

pick that zucchini over there.

Beyond that not many plans, but I'm imagining that Rachel and I

will probably stick around here at Wurruk'an for a little

while.

I'm feeling pretty settled here.

It's feeling a lot like home.

I think the number one thing that's

been solidified in my mind this year

is that my favorite things in the world

are imagination, creativity, and teamwork.

And the combination of those three things

is personally the recipe for living in a beautiful way

in the future.

I love community.

I love other people.

I love living and spending time with other people.

I don't know whether or not living

in an intentional community is part of my future.

One thing that I knew coming here

was that living in community is a challenge.

It involves effort and that that effort is worth it.

Yeah, it's been a really transformational year for me.

I didn't expect to have the opportunity

to be constructing my own house this year,

so it's been very humbling to have

the generosity of all the people involved and the land

owner to allow me to do that, because it's

been quite a journey to collect the materials

and go through the process of building

over an extended period of time.

So that's just been fantastic.

You know, blown my expectations out of the water.

So once I've finished building my house, which

will be sometime early in 2016, I

plan to relocate it to Melbourne, hopefully,

in a backyard somewhere that affords me a location

where I can ride my bike and catch

public transport without having to be car reliant.

But after moving it to Melbourne and living there

for a little while and enjoying a bit of city life,

I don't really have a plan.

I'm very happy to have that feeling of freedom

and liberation for the first time in my life.

And I'm going to make the most of that.

I think one thing I get paralyzed by is the sense

of having to do it right, of somehow not making mistakes.

And we've made so many mistakes living here.

There are buildings that are leaky.

There are disagreements that never got resolved.

There are contradictions in the way

we're living and compromises that we had to make.

So from one perspective, we failed.

We haven't transformed the world or lived this perfect example.

And from another perspective, those very failings

are our gifts, and they are the offering,

and they are the learnings, because we've risked

and we've been willing to put our values on the line,

and we've been willing to test these ideas,

and try and bring them into the shared reality.

And no one holds the answers.

No one has the perfect solution.

It's going to require a response from everyone.

We're going to be moving towards a more wholesome and enduring way of life.

And, you know, the challenges, the failings, the mistakes,

the triumphs, they're all part of the story of change.

And I just hope that other people

can feel that encouragement to make

their own beautiful mistakes on the way

to on the way to integrity.

[music playing]

[singing] Picture me standing in a forest fire counting

every burning branch.

Picture me sifting ashes through my hands.

Picture me sitting in a clearing now, my head between my hands.

You told me that the forest wouldn't burn.

Why did I wait for so long to see the silence in your song?

And why did I hold out my hands as

if the rain would understand?

You said you made your money when the markets crashed.

You covered yourself in gold.

You've said you'd only done what you'd been told.

You said to head to the forest when the fallout starts.

You'd meet me there in turn.

You promised me the forest wouldn't' burn.

Why did I wait for so long to see silence in your song?

And why did I hold out my hands as

if the rain would understand?

I'm going to take a branch from the black tree.

I'll scratch a circle where I'm standing.

I'll draw a line to the dry grass.

And plant a Ghost Gum to remind us.

I'll trace my way through the suburbs

and move in like a dry wind with no words.

I'll take a fist full of charcoal

and write my name on your white walls.

Why did I wait?

Bearing the bells in the Times Square.

We're gonna build a fire there.

We'll fill it with our old plans.

We'll let them burn, burn, burn.

You'll ring the bells in the Times Square.

We're gonna build a fire there.

We'll fill it with our old plans and let them burn, burn, burn.

Let them burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn,

burn.