Top: The maze is hidden in the common land green space between homes. Photo courtesy of studio threefiftyseven. Bottom left: The philosophy of ‘Live, Work, Eat, Play’ is well established within the village. Many inhabitants simultaneously maintain vegetable gardens, home-based businesses and commuting short distances via bike to local shops, the beach or the farm. Bottom right: ‘Honk’.
One home, with the outward appearance of a conventional singlefronted cottage, incorporates innovative features including a novel method of heating. Solar heated water is stored below the central kitchen counter, and also in a bedroom wall, with heating regulated by opening and closing decorative timber panels. Another home is built with a mixture of hemp and lime masonry, which provides insulation and moisture regulation, while locking up atmospheric carbon. A windowed clerestory at the apex of the roof directs sunlight to the centre of the home. As-well-as sustainability and creativity, the village founders envisaged a progression towards self-reliance. Food production is encouraged on private lots and the common land, and in particular on the village farm, which has been developed with orchards, chickens, geese, a market garden, honey production, woodlots and seasonal pasturing of sheep and cattle. Also on the farm is the community wastewater treatment plant, converting all of the village’s effluent to high-grade recycled water, which is used to irrigate the orchards and common land. Along with the rainwater harvesting in all village homes (backed-up by mains water from a single village connection), this on-site treatment of sewage means villagers are free of SA Water accounts.
The first settlers of the village established an ethos of joining in planting and maintaining the common land. Today volunteer efforts continue to make the village not only sustainable and productive, but also beautiful. The mounds, verges and gardens are dense with vegetation, fruit is abundant, the ponds are home to frogs, and the birds, which had mostly deserted this land before the village was established, have returned in great numbers. Participation in caring for the land is one element of the social glue that bonds this strong and resilient community. There is also a commitment to caring for each other. Villagers cook meals for those who are unwell, while the ‘yarning group’ makes blankets for newborn babies. There are regular social gatherings and events, movies at the amphitheatre, art and craft workshops, shared meals at the ‘sharing shed’ next to the community pizza oven. For younger villagers, play spaces have been created in the village and on the farm. But the village isn’t insular. Many villagers work, study or volunteer in surrounding towns and suburbs, and there are strong links with the nearby Willunga Waldorf School. Villagers exhibit at local art galleries, perform in local concerts, and regularly host markets, movie screenings and festivals for people outside the village. Indeed the villagers initiated the very popular New Year’s Eve > 33