A great day’s building today, with all four walls up and a tiny house starting to take form!
Putting together the first wall frame.
Two wall frames being worked on at once. In the background is another of the property’s tiny houses, built in December 2015, and the yurt we put up this year.
Two walls up!
Photos by Jordan Osmond
Today Jordan posted a short film about the build earlier this year of Liam and Rachel’s tiny house here at Wurruk’an. The house is made predominantly from recycled materials for a total cost of just over $400, including the petrol to salvage the materials. Gardens are underway around the house and soon a deck will be added. A beautiful example of a simple approach to building!
Day 4 was spent cutting and raising rafters. The tiny house has a roof! In the photo above workshop participants Killian, Jacob and Steph are at work on high, with John looking on from below.
Workshop participant Steph managing the drill at a tricky angle.
The end of the day and the tiny house on wheels has its roof in place.
Photos by Jordan Osmond
Light rain on and off throughout the day set the build back only a little. Most of the day was spent under the tarp putting up sheet bracing and sisalation paper.
The first section of sheet bracing going up.
Simon, one of the workshop participants, using a wire wheel brush drill attachment to remove rust from the antique stove Emmet will be using for heating and cooking in the tiny house.
Photos by Jordan Osmond
Last day of the workshop! Emmet is walking on clouds today – his tiny house on wheels is well underway, with more work done on the roof and wall cladding begun. The amazing crew of 14 participants have brought a fantastic vibe to Wurruk’an this week. It feels like the six days have been so much more than a build workshop, with great new connections made and friendships established, lots of useful skills learned and confidence developed, and offers to help on each others’ own tiny house builds in the future.
We’ll keep posting regularly as progress continues on Emmet’s tiny house on wheels. Keep an eye out!
Corrugated iron cladding going on under the tarp – lots of rain today but great progress made even so.
Photos by Jordan Osmond
Yesterday we made great progress on our new outdoor seating area, which is in front of the rocket stoves that we’ll use for summer cooking. We’re using hessian coffee sacks – which we have an endless supply of from a coffee importer in nearby Moe – and filling them with clay from the site. Once we have the roof up this week we’ll cob and render the bags. Getting there!
We decided to stop at four layers, which feels like a good height to sit at.
Paddy is jumping on the bag to pound it flat, while Liam and Antoinette shovel clay into the next bag to about three-quarters full, leaving enough room to fold over the top.
Liam with the onerous task of hooking in a line of barbed wire, which goes between each layer of bags to help keep them in place.
Photos by Jordan Osmond
Rachel has become deeply passionate about ducks this year and has 8 ducks and 2 drakes at the moment in a large enclosure below the Pumpkin Patch. She can be seen taking them for walks around the property on slug patrol; they love to peck around in the dirt while we’re clearing gardens for new planting. Last month she invested in an incubator in order to begin breeding and her first little ducklings began emerging last week after 28 days of incubation. Pekings, Ayelsbury, Peking x Cayuga and Khaki Campbells have hatched and 13 little ones are squeaking away and constantly busy in our lounge room, beguiling all visitors.
Rachel, our resident duck master, proudly holding her first hatchling.
When the ducklings first come out of the incubator they’re still low-energy and spend a lot of time snoozing.
Photos by Jordan Osmond
In anticipation of the end of the “Simpler Way” project out here, we are hosting two final working bees for the year. We will try to finish all of our ambitious projects, including the construction of a hessian-sack earthbag seating area, a bush-carpentry shelter, enormous vegetable gardens, tree plantings for forestry and food, the final stages of a tiny-house-on-wheels, raising ducklings and many more fun endeavours. Organic food will be provided for all three days for free, gluten free options will also be available, though snacks and meal contributions would definitely be appreciated. In the evenings, we will play some films on the projector and/or run workshops on things like: fruit tree propagation, Sketch-Up (for designing buildings etc.), keeping ducks for eggs and meat, paper making, knitting, natural building, clay refining for pottery or any number of other skills, pending where the interest is.
If you’d like to join us, send an email via our contact page so that we have accurate numbers for catering purposes. You’ll need a tent, warm sleeping bag, water bottle, hat, sunscreen, snacks, films to share, workshop ideas and anything else that you think might be relevant.
So…
What: Wurruk’an Working Bee
When: November 13, 14 and 15 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) AND
December 18, 19 and 20 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday)
How to get here from Melbourne: Take either the Traralgon V/Line train or the Bairnsdale V/Line train and get off at Moe station. From there it’s a 45 minute walk or 15 minute bike ride to the property. Train cost is about $7.40 each way for concession, and about $13 for full fare. Alternatively, you can drive along the M1 and take the second exit to Moe.
We look forward to seeing you all down here for these fun events!
Best wishes
The Wurruk’an community
This weekend’s working bee was super productive and great fun. With 15-20 people over the course of three days focused on two big projects, we saw amazing progress on a couple of jobs that we’re so happy to have completed – the stairs and landscaping leading to the earth bag house, and the bush pole shelter over the rocket stoves. Plus we got four new composting loos made up, some gardening done and on the last afternoon those still here participated in a felt-making workshop put on by a wonderfully generous local lady, Barb. All up a fabulous success and we are so grateful to the amazing team of enthusiastic helpers who brought so much energy and willingness to work hard all weekend. A great experience – we’re looking forward to doing it again in December!
Liam and Goldie take a break as Ben and Polly (foreground) wield mattocks to loosen the rock-hard clay. In the background wearing red, Terry, who joined us all the way from Adelaide, is working on the retaining wall.
Many many many wheelbarrow-loads of compost were trundled down the long driveway by wonderfully willing workers over the course of Saturday afternoon. The outcome is beautiful big new garden beds reading for planting.
Our resident architect Dan (on the roof) led the team working on the bush pole shelter – a huge job, beautifully done – and, after spending Sunday morning making cob, another team began rendering the hessian bag seating area.
The new shelter, nearing completion.
The cob-rendered hessian bag seats will be lime rendered in a week or two before we back-fill them with gravel and landscape the area behind. Also next on the to-do list is a food prep bench and wood shelter.
Photo by Jordan Osmond, Happen Films
It’s been a long journey, but our documentary is now available online! We hope that you enjoy the film and we encourage people to share widely. Deep thanks to everyone involved in this truly collaborative project.
Wurruk’an is a small community of people living in West Gippsland, Victoria. For the last few years we have been trying to push the boundaries of environmental practice by exploring what it means to live in a deeply sustainable way. So far the community has built many demonstration “tiny houses” using a combination of reclaimed materials, cob, “Earthship style” rammed earth and super-adobe.
As well as constructing these small buildings, the group has retrofitted an old farm shed into a cosy living space, developed an ever-growing organic vegetable garden, hosted many working bees and workshops, experimented with low-energy alternatives and taken part in a documentary film entitled “A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity”. We are continually trying to create a space which challenges the layers of oppression and unsustainability built into our current society, and trying to demonstrate what a post-capitalist world might look like.
After the documentary process was complete, a few of our residents moved on to new projects in new places, so now we have two or three available residencies. More details on the application process below. We encourage applications from all demographics.
Life on the property involves taking part in community life, growing food, caring for our small flock of ducks and geese, sharing in the chores and gradually developing the property as a functional demonstration site. While we hope that you will join us in working collaboratively and doing things together, there will be ample time to spend on your own pursuits, be it paid work, bushwalking, using our humble woodworking space, crafting things, etc.
The property is 8 hectares, 5 of which are bushland. It is bordered by the regional train line and the nearest station is only 4 kilometres away, which takes you straight into Melbourne in just under 2 hours.
We are looking for a commitment of six months as a minimum, however shorter stays will also be considered. There is no rent to be paid. Food and utility bills are shared. We are seeking applications from kind, creative, passionate, and dedicated people who have the social skills to live in a community.
If this sounds like it’s for you, please email Liam (email below) with a short bio about yourself and why you are interested in applying (no more than 500 words please). After the applications are received, we will arrange for a visit so that short-listed applicants can meet all of the community members and get a glimpse of the land.
Applications close July 22nd.
Contact Liam: liam.culbertson2014@gmail.com
After the documentary process was complete, a few of our residents moved on to new projects in new places, so now we have two or three available residencies. More details on the application process below. We encourage applications from all demographics.
Life on the property involves taking part in community life, growing food, caring for our small flock of ducks and geese, sharing in the chores and gradually developing the property as a functional demonstration site. While we hope that you will join us in working collaboratively and doing things together, there will be ample time to spend on your own pursuits, be it paid work, bushwalking, using our humble woodworking space, crafting things, etc.
The property is 8 hectares, 5 of which are bushland. It is bordered by the regional train line and the nearest station is only 4 kilometres away, which takes you straight into Melbourne in just under 2 hours. For more information and photos, see our website here.
We are looking for a commitment of six months as a minimum, however shorter stays will also be considered. There is no rent to be paid. Food and utility bills are shared. We are seeking applications from kind, creative, passionate, and dedicated people who have the social skills to live in a community.
If this sounds like it’s for you, please email Liam (email below) with a short bio about yourself and why you are interested in applying (no more than 500 words please). After the applications are received, we will arrange for a visit so that short-listed applicants can meet all of the community members and get a glimpse of the land.
Applications close July 22nd.
Contact Liam: liam.culbertson2014@gmail.com
A Gippsland winter can be bitter. Our trusty Everhot Deluxe 204 wood fire oven/stove has staved off many a cold night and cooked it’s fair share of pumpkin soups and crusty sourdough. So many soups in fact that we had worked through pretty well all of our firewood. The big mission of this weekend was to gather, chop and stack as much timber as possible. By getting our firewood stack prepared now we are able to cure the wood for the coming year, making it burn cleaner and easier come winter 2017.
A couple of fine gentlemen using a restored 1.7m bucking saw to chop some fallen trees from the property
The sky was uncharacteristically merciful this weekend and we had an excellent turnout of willing hands with folks travelling from as far afield as the Bellarine Peninsula and Wollongong. With more labour and better weather than we new what to do with we also got stuck into the gardens and a mighty spring clean of the tennis court.
Loading up the barrows of soil to level out the area for our future timber shelter
Before
After
Thank you again to our stellar cooking team, including the indefatigable efforts of our resident baker who stayed up till 3am cooking 10 loaves sourdough!
A fresh, local, organic banquet as thanks to all our willing workings. What great tucker!
Lazy Sunday
Thanks again to all who came out and the hard yakka you poured into the property. For those who’d like to come and check the place out our next Working Bee should be early September, with a focus on the veggie gardens & Spring planting 
If you’re keen to get along to future working bee’s either follow us on Facebook or send as a message in our ‘Contact’ section and we’ll add you to the mailing list.
It’s getting harder and harder to create and share a meal together without running into laws that say:
You can’t share an annual farm-slaughtered steer with your family, OR
You can’t grab a bottle of milk directly from your dairy-farming neighbour’s vat next door, OR
You can’t spend the day transforming a pig into a great variety of salami for everyone to take home and cure in their sheds (just like they still do across Italy).
For farmers who want to do their own value adding and sell their produce directly, regulations can be cost prohibitive or criminalising. That’s why the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) is raising money for a Legal Defence Fund – to defend farmers’ and eaters’ rights to collectively determine their own food and agriculture systems! We hope that all attendees on the day will support this cause and make a donation.
Join us at Wurruk’an Ecovillage for a rousing potluck lunch to celebrate the food traditions that nourish our communities over a variety of foods that you can’t buy
Bring anything that is homemade, wild-caught, shed-brewed, fermented, unpasteurised, air-cured or dry-aged. In other words all the good stuff that we all eat but too often can’t buy or sell! And if you’re all out of your own wholesome illicit produce, come along anyway and share in the bounty!
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/you-cant-buy-what-i-eat-potluck-lunch-tickets-27644209575
Spring is well under way here at Wurruk’an – the flowers are bloomin’ awesome, the bees are busy buzzing, the sun is shining (at least I’m sure it is somewhere above the rain clouds), our dainty garden mutated into a forest overnight, and the geese are keeping themselves busy hissing at every moving thing that comes near their nest. As for the humans, our newest resident Beth is away doing a Permaculture course in Daylesford, learning all of the awesome things and trying to figure out how she can smuggle a Jersey cow home in her hatchback.
Liam and Rachel have just come back from their basket weaving sojourn in Tasmania where many baskets were made, much cheese consumed, and many lambs cuddled.
Dan is busy trying to replicate Arnie’s leg muscles on his ride to and from work every day, doing architect-y things, and putting a ceiling in the Cob Cabin.
A lot of our summer veggies are in the ground, and hopefully it won’t be long until we can move on from turnips and cabbages to tomatoes, eggplants, zucchinis, pumpkins, beans, corn, capsicums, potatoes…
I have been breeding ducks and geese over the last couple of years at Wurruk’an, and a week ago saw 12 shiny new additions to the flock. Khaki Campbell ducks make up the bulk of the poultry here, as they lay loads of big, rich eggs that are fantastic for eating on toast or added to baked goods.
Unfortunately the strain we have here aren’t particularly good mothers, so they were hatched artificially and will be raised by hand. These ducklings will be the third generation here at the farm, with the matriarch of the flock, Mama Campbell, still keeping everyone in line.
The little ones will be under a heat lamp at night for another couple weeks, then they will be out foraging with the adults for slugs, bugs and grubs. They don’t stay small and fluffy for long, but they do stay cute forever.
Rach
After the particularly cold, wet and windy spring just gone, we’re happy to have our summer veggie gardens kicking into gear at last.
The tomatoes are setting fruit, which is a pretty significant time in the life of a veggie gardener! The emergence of those first few green tomatoes brings with it that familiar sense of excitement and anticipation.
The quinoa, pumpkins and potatoes all seem to be enjoying our newest growing space. It was freshly tilled over late winter, then the ducks and geese cleared and fertilised it for several weeks before we finally planted it out.
A few weeks back, we pulled and processed over 1000 bulbs of garlic. By the end of this season, we’re also hoping to have a bumper crop of chillies, with over 40 plants in the ground. Garlic and chilli for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
And of course, the ever faithful zucchinis are keeping us well fed in the meantime.
Beth and the Wurruk’an folks
In our efforts to reduce our impact upon the planet, we use a lot of hand-tools at Wurruk’an- chisels, knives, handsaws, hoes. As some of you might know, we also practice many of the crafts (spoon-making has been our latest craze), including basket-making and baking, spoon carving and wood-working. The wonderful thing about blacksmithing is that, with a bit of creativity, you can produce almost all of the tools needed for these crafts.
Forging tools for basket-making
Because spoon making and willow basket making are two things that I plan to do a lot of this winter, I made a collection of all of the tools for both of these crafts, including bodkins, awls, rapping irons, shop knives, carving knives, crook knives, several froes, a fid and a carving gouge.
From left to right: Two basketry shop knives, a bodkin, a fid (for threading willow through gaps in the weave), a rapping iron with commander, a froe, a crook knife for carving spoons, a palm gouge, also for carving spoons
I also made some fun mug-hooks, a toilet-roll holder and a dinner bell. All of these tools and ornaments were made using discarded reinforcing bar, railroad spikes, leaf spring and coiled suspension springs from cars and trucks, almost all sourced from the local tip-shop!
The new Wurruk’an dinner bell
In order to create a good cutting edge, some of the tools needed to be hardened by heating to around 800 degrees C (the point at which steel is no longer magnetic), then being plunged into a tin of vegetable oil. Due to their relatively high carbon content, coil springs and leaf springs are perfect for this.
Hardening a bowl-turning tool by quenching in oil
We here at Wurruk’an are big fans of round spaces. They make you feel like a hobbit and embrace you like an immense doona. When it comes time to add a floor or a ceiling to them though, it can be a little tricky. Luckily we have a pretty good cache of old timbers to draw from for our projects.
The yurt is a lovely space but the hessian sack floor, with sand and gravel below, wasn’t cutting it. It never dried out in winter and was a hotbed for spiders. The solution was to put in a raised timber floor to get some ventilation under that sucker. This would also provide an outdoor platform for times in winter that we take down the yurt.
Step 1. Dig some trenches in a roughly hexagonal shape around the yurt to receive the bearers. We cast a series of string lines across the yurt to get a sense of level. From this information we can refine the depths of the trenches, allowing the bearer topsides to be level. 
Step 2. We put a bitumen coating on the end grain of the bearers to prevent rot as these will be nestled in the ground. While they were drying we poured some dollops of concrete (1 bag of cement mixed with the sand and gravel from the site) at the meeting points of the bearers. This holds the bearers down; over time moisture can warp the timber out of shape and these little footings make sure that any movement is restrained.
Step 3. We scrounged a collection of old timbers together and ripped them all to a uniform height with a circular saw and jig. We laid these down at roughly 450mm centres and around the perimeter of the space.
Step 4. More scrounging, this time for decking. Our honorary carpenter Tom brought some scrap Merbau (never buy Merbau! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intsia_bijuga#Illegal_logging) and we cobbled together the rest from a few old hardwood door frames and some cypress we ripped to depth (19mm plus or minus). This structure, about 3.5m in diameter, required about 90 linear metres of decking at 100mm wide. We ended up being very tight with timber, having just enough to get us over the line. This scarcity meant that the last 1/4 of the floor was arranged as quite a meditative puzzle of boards.
Step 5. Have a dance party on your handiwork. 
NB Circular spaces are also quite hard to photograph. No illicit substances were consumed in the creation of this deck.
Wurruk’an is looking for some heaps good legends to join our ecovillage/rural sharehouse. The one year simple living project featured in the ‘A Simpler Way’ doco is evolving into a more permanent community and we’re after some folks keen to join us for the long term. For anyone feeling the claustrophobia of the city, the burden of high rents, or craving the capacity to give your environmental ethics a crack, this might be your ticket.
The recruiment process will be ongoing over the next few months, please invite your friends and spread the word far and wide.
About Us
Wurruk’an is a small and emerging ecovillage in Gippsland, Victoria. We’re located just outside of Moe, about 2 hours east from Melbourne on the train line towards Traralgon. The 20 acre property is an inclusive gathering space for people seeking to explore meaningful alternatives to consumer capitalism and demonstrate simpler ways of living. There are currently four of us living at Wurruk’an. We like to think of ourselves as friendly, inquisitive, environmentally-minded folks. We collaborate with the co-owners of the property and with broader networks of people connected to Wurruk’an, including The Simplicity Institute and local community groups. Over the course of 2017 we will be looking to consolidate our projects around the property: getting the food gardens to a workable level, maintaining the small houses we’ve built, managing the land, and continuing our public outreach.
The number of residents will likely shrink over the coming months and we’re excited to offer new residencies for two to four new people. We are looking for long term residents, those looking for stays a year and over. The desire to be a part of community, to navigate the joys and challenges of working collaboratively, is a pretty major part of life at Wurruk’an.
New Residents
The ideal applicant would be self-directed, committed to communal living, open to communicating clearly and compassionately (even around difficult topics), keen on growing food, active in reducing their ecological footprint, and open to being challenged. It also helps if you enjoy ‘The Grapes of Wrath’.
Obviously we’re heaps happy to teach you how we’ve been managing the property, though we are open to ideas and looking for people who have skill sets to offer Wurruk’an. Particularly, we are after organic gardeners, builders, tinkerers, and people with administration skills (this includes media and community engagement, online presence, general organisation, and treasury). We are looking for someone who would be confident to manage and take responsibility in one of these roles.
If you think that you might be interested in applying for residency, please read on. Feel free to share this information with friends who may be interested. You can
watch the full length documentary on the community’s first year at http://happenfilms.com/a-simpler-way/
Life at Wurruk’an
The farm work entails tending to our vegetable plots and caring for our animals (ducks, geese, chickens, guinea pigs); we are working toward some degree of self-sufficiency with fruit, vegetables, preserves, meat, and eggs. We are generally vego in our communal meals, though we do occasionally butcher our own animals to keep flock sizes manageable. Additionally, we maintain the 8 acres of cleared land and 12 acres of native forest on the property.
Living together doesn’t necessarily come easily; a part of our mission is to develop the arts of communal living. This includes stuff like communicating well, aiming for consensus decision making, having fun together, and working collaboratively. Essentially, this is thinking in the ‘We’ mentality rather than the ‘I’ mentality. A large part of life here involves regular household meetings, cooking and eating together, building together, planning events, and all other miscellany of group projects.
There is also an outreach component of life here. We make an effort to engage with the local community, maintain an online presence, and collaborate with other groups like Earthworker, Baw Baw Sustainability Network, CERES, and GLaWAC. When engaging with other folk of the Latrobe Valley we aim to be neither judgemental nor preachy, but rather look to find common ground.
Living Arrangements
We already have accommodation on the property for you; you don’t need to be able build your own tiny house or anything like that (though feel free to BYO). While we do not pay formal rent to the landowners, there are costs of living here. Everyone pitches in to developing Wurruk’an and we all have equal say about where this money goes. Typically it might go towards garden projects, acquiring new tools, maintaining infrastructure, and generally sustaining the lifestyle here. There are also the all the regular costs like utilities, internet, bulk food orders, and animal feed. In total this averages out to around a $250/month contribution. Additionally, there is a minimum amount of property maintenance required. We’ve found that full time employment isn’t great for meaningfully engaging with the property; three or so days of paid work per week is better. Ideally, this balance should allow you enough time to immerse yourself in Wurruk’an related projects, and to still have a life outside the property.
Application Process
To apply, please send a short profile of yourself, outlining the following in a page or so:
Applications can be sent to hello@wurrukan.org
If it seems like you’re a good fit for Wurruk’an, we will arrange a time for you to come out and visit for 2-3 days so that we can meet you, and so you can get a better understanding of life on the property. If it gels between us, you will be invited for a month or so period of living in the community. We know this trial period can be a bit of a hassle but it’s an important decision; once you are a part of the community, your input will be considered equal to everyone else’s and you will have an active say in the future of Wurruk’an.
It is unfortunate that this process will not suit international applicants. That said, if you are visiting Australia anyway, please keep in touch to find out about upcoming events.
