Sustainable Lifestyle

When German backpacker Guido Eberding first landed in Australia in 1983, his initial reaction to what is now his adopted home was more a matter of complete shock than instant attraction to the “wide brown land”.

“I landed in Perth and drove across the Nullarbor,” he recalls. “It hadn’t rained for months, it was hot and dry and dusty and frankly, I didn’t like what I saw. But finally I arrived in Dorrigo and as I drove down into the beautiful Bellinger Valley, I suddenly realised that this part of Australia was simply fantastic.”

Having done his dues working for the German civil service — in retribution for having successfully sued for exemption from compulsory national military service as a conscientious objector — Guido decided to join a community in Bellingen for some much-needed R&R from the trials of life in a Berlin still suffering from the strictures of the Cold War.

Along the way, he was able to refine the green ethics he’d grown up with in Germany where his mother automatically “sorts recycling into four different colour codes”, double glazing is standard and the use of solar and wind power regarded as the “logical response to diminishing resources rather than a tree-hugging fringe thing”.

He also met his now partner and mother of their three children, Meg Nickle — “but there was an age difference that at the time made romance out of the question”.

In fact it was through Meg’s mother’s partner, whom Guido met at a meditation retreat, that he found his ultimate career. Steve, an architect with National Parks and Wildlife Service, suggested Guido come and work for him on various projects throughout the northern NSW region. Guido was initially happy to oblige, but soon decided he should get some professional qualifications of his own.

He went to Sydney to complete an architectural drafting course through the Sydney Institute of Technology. He planned to complete an architecture degree at the University of NSW but, in 1992, decided to return to Berlin where there was a boom in building activity following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of Germany.

“It was an exciting time and I was quickly able to get a work as an architect,” Guido recalls. “Being fluent in English was an attribute as there were a lot of English crews on the building sites.

“I worked for an office that employed two thirds of its team from the East, a third from the West; I was the token Aussie. We had lots of great projects and it was a steep learning curve for me.”

In the process, Guido became reacquainted with a culture where living green was becoming increasingly mainstream. The political coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens in the 1990s, as the government of the reunited Germany, gave this movement political impetus.

It led the way for the development of solar and wind industries, where householders and companies are rewarded for feeding into the grid by paying off interest-free loans which allow them to invest in solar and wind technology in the first place. They also introduced the “feed-in tariff” which rewarded the generation of renewable energy.

Numerous countries have adopted a similar policy since, with the sad exception of Australia. To this day, Guido finds it frustrating that “there’s hardly a single Australian component in solar and wind generation technology. Most of the materials used in Australia are imported from Germany, Denmark, Japan or China.

“In Australia, all thinking is clouded by the cost of alternative technologies,” he adds. “In Germany, electricity costs twice as much but, with all the environmental initiatives, power consumption is half as much as in Australia per person, so the total cost works out the same. The lack of political will to embrace renewable energy by both major parties in this country is astounding.”

In 1995, Meg caught up with her old family friend when she joined him as part of an extended European vacation. They spent six months transporting a friend’s houseboat up the Rhine and Mosel from Dusseldorf and, via rivers and canals, to Toulouse in southern France. The rest, as they say, is history. Since the couple returned to Australia in 1996 they’ve had barely a day apart.

An unfinished weatherboard cottage that Meg’s mother, Sue, had bought in the early 80s became their home, and since then the house has grown “organically” as the couple worked towards achieving their goal of a sustainable lifestyle.

Guido established his Kalang Design House, aimed at spreading environmentally sustainable design across the Bellingen region. In the meantime he put these principles into practice with their own property, about half an hour’s drive from Bellingen.

Using durable, low-maintenance zincalume and many recycled materials and “found” objects from building sites and garage sales, Guido and Meg have added to their house as their family has grown with the births of Sasha, now nine years, Demian, seven and Yani, five.

The property is self-sufficient for water as they harvest rainwater for all their household needs and pump water from the nearby river for the garden which includes a healthy organic vegetable patch and numerous fruit trees.

They have a composting toilet, “the same as the National Parks use. Because we live so close to the river, there’s the risk with septics of spillover contamination and, besides, there’s not sufficient regulation on emptying them.”

Hot water is solar generated. “We maybe have to turn the booster switch on five to seven times a year,” Guido says. “And in winter we try to be flexible and leave showers until the middle of the day when the sun is up.”

Taking advantage of the federal government’s subsidy scheme, which provides an $8000 rebate on a $12,000 grid-connect photovoltaic electricity system, they’ve installed a 1kW unit on the roof.

“Unfortunately, the rebate only exists for one unit and our house would need three to be self-sufficient, so to do it completely would be expensive,” Guido says. “However, our bill is $180 a quarter and a third of that is meter reading, so we’re not doing too badly.

“We use only use a few CFLs (compact fluoro lights) because they do have mercury within them and unlike Germany there is no recycling facility for CFLs in Australia; the old ones will end up in landfills with a truly toxic consequence in the future.

“We mostly use dimmable 20-watt energy-efficient halogen and some LEDs and I run around turning lights off after the children. But I estimate that the solar hot water saves 1600kW and the PV unit produces 1400kW per year, so that’s about 3000kW we’re saving and that’s quite a lot.”

Guido and Meg are the first to admit they have a long way to go to achieving a completely “green” lifestyle. “To do that you would have to be completely self-sufficient,” Guido says. “Because we live 20km out of town we are very petrol dependent and ideally we’d drive a hybrid car, but we do need a 4WD to get to our house and there is no hybrid version on the market yet. At least working from home does limit the need to use the car.

“So obviously our lifestyle is less than benchmark and sometimes we buy household items that are durable rather than low impact.

“But the fact remains that Australia is a very good place to live sustainably. You can still buy land relatively cheaply and provided you are prepared to work at it, minimise your impact on the environment. To do this in Germany you would have to be a millionaire.

“I mean, we even have the luxury of owning horses that we don’t ride — the perfect green lawnmowers.”

Article Tags:  Sustainable Lifestyle, solar hot-water system, recycled timber, impact on environment, living green