Jill Redwood is a writer and environmental activist who has been living off the grid for 30 years on her 15-acre property on the edge of the forest in East Gippsland in Victoria. Jill built her home herself entirely out of reused and recycled materials, and the walls of the house are made of timber offcuts and cow dung.

Jill says that the home took eight years to build, and during that time, she lived in a smaller dirt-floored bark hut on the property. Though she had never built a house before, Jill said that she had previously built shacks and chicken sheds, and had read about how early settlers would build their houses.

“It’s just like baking a cake, you just follow the recipe,” she explained.

Jill said that the timber walls of her home are filled in with a mixture of cow pats and lime.

“That is another early settlers’ method for chinking up the holes in logs and awkward-to-get places,” she said. “It’s non-toxic and it seemed like it was the sensible thing to do. Cow poo isn’t all that offensive, it’s really just mushed up grass. Once you gather a bucket of it and mix it with lime it actually has a fishy smell until it’s dried.”

Jill’s home is completely solar-powered, with the hot water coming from her wooden stove.

“When I cook the food it warms the house,” she said. “The power I use is minimal – I need the office equipment like the computer and scanner and the modem for the internet. I also use lights at night, a radio and a food processor and when the sun really shines and there’s a lot of power coming in I’ve got a washing machine. That’s a luxury.”

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