Big Island

We got to Abu Dhabi for a stopover - a 14 hour wait for me, only 2 hours for Kara, due to flight costs. She went on to Sydney, had a night in a hostel and a lovely hot shower.. I had a night of free internet but no sleep. The Etihad flights were excellent, anyway, and I even got a free toothbrush!

One more flight - from Sydney to Adelaide. Phew. I guess we left our hotel in Kathmandu at 10am on Monday the 1st of June, and arrived at Kara's friend Michael's place at 2pm on Wednesday the 3rd.. pretty much 48 hours of travelling for me.

Michael lives with his family at Aldinga Arts Ecovillage. He had borrowed a caravan for us to stay in, which was really cold as it is winter here! Not anything like as cold as a UK winter, mind. We had a great time at Aldinga, looking at the different eco houses. In Australia you can get 1kW of pv solar panels put on your roof for... nothing. The grants are so good from the government. In the UK, an installed system costs about £7500, with a £2500 grant from the government meaning you'd end up paying £5000. Very disappointing. And the grants for solar hot water in the UK are even more pathetic! AND the Ozzies get a 25p per kWh feed in tariff - we get something like half that. Our green credentials truly are pathetic (still, getting good loft insulation is a much better initial return on investment than solar - I'll be doing the insulation at my house when I get back to the UK).

So we saw straw bale buildings, rammed earth, earth bricks (which we helped make a couple of hundred of!), and so on. Most of the rooves are powder coated steel, to enable rain water collection - Michael's had 40 thousand litres of water storage. Most houses have no air conditioning and little in the way of heating - they are all a good passive solar design. Compared to a conventional suburb in Australia, it's pretty amazing.

After a week at Aldinga, we took yet another flight (ugh) to Brisbane, a train to Landsborough, a bus to Maleny, and finally got picked up by Max Lindegger in his battered old car - equivalent to my old Vauxhall Nova - a famous (in eco circles) ecovillage designer, who took us to his place in Crystal Waters.

What a place! We are staying in their cabin, which could actually house 4 but just has us 2 at the moment. The Lindeggers have 8 miniature Angus cattle (beautiful animals), 10 beehives, 8 chickens, pecan and mandarin trees, vegetable gardens. We have mostly been weeding so far, but are taking a couple of days consultancy with Max as well - incredibly useful information, gathered over decades of planning ecovillages. This morning we helped him with the bees - taking frames out, uncapping them, centrifuging the honey out - magical. The honey tastes absolutely wonderful.