The good life

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A few years ago, Linda Cockburn, Trevor Wittmer and their son, Caleb, were an average modern-day Western family. The couple worked full-time to pay the mortgage and make ends meet, while Caleb, who was five at the time, spent 10 hours a day in child care. They bought their groceries at a major supermarket, but ate takeaway often as they seldom had time to cook. They washed their dishes in an average family-sized dishwasher and their clothes in an average family-sized washing machine. For entertainment, they watched TV, read books and went to the movies. The family consumed about 15 to 20 kilowatt-hours of power and 900 litres of water per day and had two cars, which alone contributed about 7,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide to the world’s ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions per year.
That was until Linda had an epiphany on her way to work one day and decided things had to change. With images of pollution, traffic, work, consumerism, long day care and a 1970s BBC program called ‘The Good Life’ rolling around in her mind, she came up with a plan to turn the family’s 2000 metre-square suburban block into an “adventure in domestic sustainability”. Four years later, the family are still holding up their end of the bargain and they‘re healthier, happier and greener for it.
6.30am: Linda, Trevor and Caleb step out of the cosy caravan that has served as their temporary bedroom for the past 18 months into a crisp Tasmanian morning. After a quick stop at their adjoining bathroom shed, complete with compost toilet and a shower which is heated by a slow-combustion stove, they head to another little shed that has served as their temporary living and dining room for the same period. As they sit down to a breakfast of eggs from their own chickens, milk from their own goat, honey from their own beehive and bread from their own oven, the family gaze across the three-acre property they bought in 2005 at the beginnings of the straw-bale home they’re currently building. “This is our newest adventure,” says Linda. “But it’s really just the next phase of our journey in domestic sustainability.”
It’s a journey that began three years ago when the family first decided to try living entirely off the large suburban block they owned in Gympie, Queensland for six months. Trevor kept his job at the Queensland Forestry Research Institute, but Linda gave up work and the family had the power, water and sewerage turned off. They created their own solar power, installed rainwater tanks, built a composting toilet, bought a goat and chickens, cultivated their own fruit and vegetables, made their own yeast, shampoo, beer and toilet paper and bartered for supplies such as rice, flour and sugar. They sold their cars and bought bicycles. They went to the library and hired free DVDs instead of going to the cinema and didn’t step foot inside a supermarket or fast-food outlet. The only things they paid for were rates, mortgage, insurance and medical expenses, plus the phone so they could communicate with family and maintain a website about their experiences. “It was the most challenging and rewarding six months of our lives and it definitely changed us for the better,” recalls Linda as she sits down to sign a few of copies of the best-selling book she wrote about the experience, Living the Good Life (Hardie Grant, 2006). “It’s been sold to individuals from all over the world, so I think more people are starting to think about the way they live and how they can make a difference to their lives and the planet.”

7.30am: Linda and Trevor call their goats, Bella and Annabella, to the homemade milking shed where they’ll get about 1.5 litres of milk from Bella. “Annabella isn’t a milk goat; we bought her to keep Bella company,” explains Trevor, who can now make milking a goat look easy, even though it took him and Linda more than a few tries to get the hang of it in the beginning.
Learning to milk a goat, however, was the least of the family’s challenges when they embarked on the sustainability experiment. “I was a bit dubious about the whole thing when Linda came home from work ranting about her plan,” recalls Trevor. “I’d lived the so-called ‘hippie dream’ when I was in my twenties in the 1970s. I formed a commune with a few friends
on 160 acres where we built mudbrick homes and tried living off the land, but it failed because the soil was no good and the possums ate all our crops!” he says with a laugh. “But Linda convinced me the ‘70s model of rejecting society for complete self sufficiency was different from the modern idea of reducing waste and power consumption through domestic sustainability.”
“We did a lot of research,” adds Linda.
“We wanted to get it right and knew little about installing solar panels, composting toilets or rainwater tanks. We also did a detailed financial plan as it was going to cost about $26,000 to have everything installed even before we began.”

Words: Linda Peatling. Photography: Scott Hawkins. Hair & make-up: Carla Rattle