I know that is very easy for me to say. I am a middle aged eccentric who is living her dream. It hasn’t been easy, in fact it has been very hard, but last night driving home from Chris Jordan’s lecture I knew that the spouse and I had made the right decision all those years ago, when we decided to live an alternate lifestyle and live as greenly as we possibly could.
Confused?
Here is the back story. A very,very condensed back story.
Twenty odd years ago Mum gave me a piece of land, this piece of land. The spouse and I decided that we couldn’t commit to a bank loan as his work was too unreliable, he was a professional fisherman at that stage. So we decided to build our home room by room as we could afford it.
It was a very,very conservative rural area then and I was quite a radical greenie. We were living in a converted bus, with a small shed that served as a kitchen and bathroom combined. Our electricity came from a series of extension cords connected to a temporary power pole and we didn’t have running water inside.
We very quickly earned the nickname “those ferals up the hill.” For us, the local tip was an open face treasure trove of building materials. If you didn’t mind sorting through the mounds of rubbish to get to them there was treasure galore. Huon pine windows and convict bricks, baltic pine planks and velvet armchairs all mixed in with dead sheep and disposable nappies. Of course the locals noticed that we were at the tip a lot and they shunned us.
If we ran over a wallaby we would stop and pick it up and so we also gained the cruel reputation of “eating road-kill”.
I was obsessive about the fact that the children were always spotlessly clean and immaculately dressed out in public.I didn’t care how I looked, odd socks and mismatched hippy/punk/thrift shop was my style of dress but the children were always dressed ultra conservatively. I was terrified that child protection would take them away because we were living in a bus and a shed.
Primary school was difficult for the children as they were regularly harassed because we didn’t have the latest gadgets and weren’t up to our eyeballs in debt like everyone else. The fact that the spouse didn’t have a regular job was also a heinous crime apparently.I also had some strange ideas about only eating ethically produced meat and horror of horrors I taught my children to loathe Macdonalds.
Now looking back I don’t regret any of the choices that I made. The house is nearly finished and it is built from 90% recycled materials. I have raised two strong willed children who are independant free-thinkers. Though raising your children to question authority and to not believe what they are told, made for some interesting discussions when it was my authority they were questioning.
Which brings me back to the lecture last night.
Chris Jordan’s message of sustainability was made even more compelling with the addition of his powerful images. Plastic is killing us. Our mass consumption is killing the planet. It is that simple. The buck stops here with me. Right now.I am going to reduce the amount of plastic I use. Starting today.
I could waffle on for ever but today I have written enough. I will continue this story in the next few days. Chris Jordan has given me permission to use his images, here on my blog. So as you watch this clip remember that it it is our plastic that is in the belly of these birds .
Yours and mine.
My plastic is killing the planet.
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Thank you for sharing your story. I was brought up by a mother who was a frugal consumer, and kept many of those ideas myself (took on more, dropped some, swapped some…). People thought it was strange when I grew up that we had cloth nappies, didn’t use paper towels or serviettes, didn’t have a TV, among many other things. It was occasionally hard to hear their comments, but I am so happy that my life was like that. Your kids will be/are too. Good on you Kim.
Yanno after your original post and introduction to the hottie er Chris I got to thinking about my family’s footprint and then I tried to figure out how to lessen it. Plastic is everywhere. It wraps our toilet paper rolls, it is what our milk comes in here and even my newspaper is delivered in a plastic sleeve. Can I live without all of those things? Of course, but some things we can’t live without. While it is important for us all to change our ways; the companies we buy from need to change their packaging habits as well and that would have a global effect.
I fail to see why a sustainable lifestyle cannot also be a conservative lifestyle. Have you read some of the country homeschooler blogs where they keep chickens and live “off the grid?” I think that can be an important aspect of being “good stewards” of what is entrusted to us. Now, I personally don’t go to the landfill for building materials, but even small choices can be economical and thoughtful.
I clicked over to the pictures and they are really something sad to see. I wonder if your husband has found anything interesting in the fish he has caught, anything unusual like what’s in these birds?
As a hippie/eccentric/treehugger myself I totally understand your choices and decisions. And I admire you for them. We do as much as we can here, recycling everything, reducing, composting, etc. My daughter is also an independent free thinker who aims to change the world. And I am so proud of that.
Since I learned of the photos I’ve been working on a painting inspired by one or two of the photos, I will share it when I get it done.
Thank you for the reminder to follow your dreams.
hugs
I’ve just looked over to where my children are playing. Do you know how much of their stuff is plastic? I’m ashamed to admit most of it. I thought we were fairly careful about how much plastic we go through but looking around me with properly open eyes I’m actually really surprised.
Bugger.
@ Mrs C, definitely a sustainable lifestyle can be a conservative lifestyle, they are not mutually exclusive.
However, that was not how it was when we were growing up. We were different, living differently. We thought differently a lot of the time too.
I’m not saying that we were right and they were wrong, it’s just that a lot of the time, we were made to feel that we were in the wrong for living differently.
Hmmm, I’m not sure I worded that to make my point properly.
Now you’ve intrigued me.
I would love to hear more about the early days.
(…and, someone’s wife, who shall not be mentioned, spent her first few years growing up in a caravan.)
You lucky thing!
You’re living my dream – except the first hubby was too ultra conservative to even entertain the very idea of recycling anything, let alone building materials or clothes. So I recycled him lol.
The new ABC show Hungry Beast showed the dead baby Albatrosses last night – the whole tribe here were silenced in shock.
The message was received loud and clear.
You’re living the life I’d like to live, but I’m not brave enough to dump my current lifestyle. If I’d known about this 40 years ago, maybe I would have tried something similar, of course peading ignorance is really no excuse…….Now, I just do what I can to minimise my footprint. But I’m not giving up my fans, sitting in front of a fan with a wet sheet wrapped around is the only thing making this heatwave bearable.
I LOVED coming to your house 🙂
I loved the fact that Veronica had her own monkey bars and her mum cooked awesome food all the time!
Dont worry about the people who shunned, they are still living their boring eyeball-debt lives.
interesting.
years ago i would probably have been one of the townsfolk who pointed a finger and called you weird.
now, not so much.
takes a while to learn and after 40 or so years i’ve learned that yes there is too much plastic and too much debt.
you “got it” early in life. you’re lucky.
What kills me is the suffering and pain those baby birds went through, just so they could die and finally be at peace.
I was the hippy chick and spent a while living in a commune but didn’t have the bravery to follow my dream as you did. We didn’t however join the crowds and follow the masses into credit card and debt galore. Preferring a simpler lifestyle – My kids are also strong willed and I shunned the ‘disney’ pj’s never minded recycled clothes. I haven’t been as green as I should have been. I am told my eldest (girl) was bullied at school for not having the latest ‘in’ thing. Other kids now grown tell me they loved coming to ‘our’ place because I didn’t mind mess etc. Some mums were snooty and wouldn’t let their darlings round to play, so daughter never really felt ‘in’ with the ‘in’ crowd. At times my eldest tells me she was embarrassed by her home but no longer.
Sometimes though in truth my guilty pleasure would be some brand spanking new appliances – and classy new stuff particularly flooring! So I am not entirely as true to the cause as I should be but I am honest and we don’t live under a mountain of debt for which I am grateful, not because we are wealthy I may add but because we do not buy stuff we cannot afford. My current beef is people who live beyond their means but don’t get me started on that one.
I should be greener and your blog helps me try much harder with this. Your imagery via the photo’s and ceramics is a stark reminder of the selfishness of the human race.
@ Veronica – it made sense to me.
I think you should be applauded for your life choices. Wish I’d had your courage but I couldn’t cope with living that close to nature and minus my mod cons! I’ve always been a city girl and the past couple of years have been our first taste of country life. I do my best to try the green route with as much as possible. I’m a great one for making and/or mending things and recycle/reuse wherever I can and most of my cooking is done from scratch using seasonal local ingredients as much as possible.
I do have a serious question though – what the bloody hell can we do with those damned plastic bottle tops? The bottles themselves go into the recycling bin but the lids go into the rubbish destined for the tip and now, sadly, we know where they go from there. So any ideas anyone?
I grew up in a “conservative” environment, but have parents who are non-judgemental and who have friends from all walks of life.
My favourite family friends lived a self-sustaining lifestyle with a little art gallery on their property.
I always had the impression that my parents envied their strong convictions and lifestyle.
Good on you for LIVING your convictions. Not enough of us are brave enough to do the same.
@ Sharon – good question re the bottle tops. What to do?
@Sharon and Achelois. the simple answer is to stop buying bottled water, bottles of fizz etc. I buy heaps of bottled water. If I am out and run out of water I will buy another bottle. *sigh* I am going to stop buying water now.
When I was a child there were drinking water fountains everywhere. Now the only place to get water is in the public toilets. And the water in town is so heavily chlorinated it tastes like shit.On the floor of my car there are 7 empty plastic drink bottles.
On Monday I am going to ring up the Hobart city council and ask about drinking water fountains in the city. I am buying a stainless steel water bottle on Wednesday.
Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, we lived in a neighborhood of the “haves” and the “have nots”. We were a family of six and often did not have what others had. Growing up like that gave me a respect of money. My husband and I pay off the credit cards monthly. If we can’t afford something, we DON’T buy it. Unlike others of our generation, we wait and save for it.
Good luck with the city council-I hope you get your water fountains.
We have a drinking water fountain in the mall where I work. Not many people use it for drinking though because many of us have seen the street people (homeless) using the little catch basin under the tap to wash their feet and faces in. I have a few water bottles with those sippy tops for drinking from, but I buy water in 10 litre casks and refill my bottles from that everyday. The bottles are rinsed along with the dishes and the tops are soaked in the steradent along with my denture. They usually last about a year like this before they start to taste funny and I buy a couple of new bottles.
What a courageous thing you did and are doing!
I admit to not being as brave as you, but am trying to be less of a consumer (except where yarn is concerned) and making less waste and recycling more – great post!
Your story impressed me so much! I’m so happy to have you as a friend!
I love you, and many times I wish I had grown up with you as a mother. <3