Category: Sustainable Living

Canberra City Planning – cycling

I get on my bike as often as I can. This can be tricky with three kids but my older two are competent cyclists and my youngest is very easy to put into either of my three options – front seat, back seat or trailer.

Having a bike trailer is a game changer for a mum – probably for anyone, but it makes a family so much more portable on bikes, increasing crucial lugging capacity, and, I have found, is well worth the investment!

So, we cycle around town as much as we can.

This is one benefit of living in the inner-north that I would not want to give up in order to settle out in one of Canberra’s sprawling suburbs. Being able to cycle to events, the pool, the library, the supermarket and friend’s houses enhances our lives is worth the sacrifice of extra space for a large garden. We are satisfied with our small one (which is jam-packed with veges) and more than satisfied with being able to walk and ride to close-at-hand amenities and luxuries, rather than guzzle up fossil fuel (and extra time) to get there.

So my cycling around town is an urban planning matter. It is closely linked to how we build our cities, how we are building Canberra.

Canberra is about as good as it gets for commuter cyclists in Australia. This is unfortunate because Canberra could be better. Fortunately, from what I can gather, ACT’s current government does seem to be pro cycling and active travel, pro medium to high density in parts (personally I am more in favour of medium density over high density in this city) and, I am hoping, also in favour of creating human scale, hospitable, fun and friendly public spaces. These things are all key to creating equitable, friendly cities where people do not have to rely on a car to get around.

In my cycle from Dickson, through O’Connor, into Civic and on into the Parliamentary Triangle and back again I encountered a range of cycling conditions. From my house I have to cross a busy intersection. This can be a little frightening with a 7 year old dare devil who loves to scream down the hill, “check your brakes!” I often call to him, not that it makes any difference. Then it is a squishy ride down a narrow but fairly quiet path to the main riding throughfare which runs from Dickson College right into The Australian National University, and on to Lake Burley Griffin, where offshoots can take you into various southern suburbs along idyllic rides by the lake. This path took me just a few block from the city centre where, after navigating a couple of less than desirable paths (caused by tree roots, so I won’t complain, I’d rather have the trees) I easily parked and did some grocery shopping.

This leg, my friends, was a journey easier than a car trip in peak hour and having to find and pay for parking in some of the storied car parks attached to the shopping centre. It included the added bonus of feeling the wind in my hair and a particular feeling that I was truly alive! If there is any feeling closer to flying than actually flying do tell because riding on a hotmixed Canberra bike path on a bike feels as much like it as I’d care to know!

After this we went on to the triangle where I made sure to take the Eastern bike path along Commonwealth Avenue bridge so that I could slide off onto the bike path taking me (along with twenty-odd mums with prams and various joggers and people in business attire) right to the back end of the National Gallery where I parked my bike and took my bonny daughter in to their excellent play space.

Truly, being a mum of a little one in Canberra does feel positively utopian at times!

The journey back home again was equally straightforward, except for finding a new, quieter, route home through Reid, which is yet another joy of cycling – adaptability and adventure.

There is certainly room for improvement in Canberra, living location is certainly one important factor to being able to make this choice. My point is that it is definitely, in my eyes, a choice worth choosing. I prefer this mode of travel above all else!

As Steve Jobs is attributed as saying: A bicycle is the most efficient form of transport. It is also, I argue, the most fun.

March 5, 2018
May Morning

May Mornings blow the air off the snow around about and bring the first, promising, chill of Winter.

I am thrilled.

A day begun well enough, with porridge and foggy windows which revealed hidden handprints and sifted the light through our bamboo forest. The kids often paint in their books in the morning and this morning practiced their target practice with the bamboo bows and arrows I made them. They actually work, but they will not last long, still totally renewable and not a milligram of plastic in sight! That’s my kind of toy. The later half of this day was spent in bed watching Pride and Prejudice as I’ve lately had the flu and was fading fast…so it actually ended pretty well too!

A capsicum from our garden – did not get enough sun to bloom red.

This boy cuddles legs. He injects love and sunshine into our lives.

This little girl loves the industry of painting, the only problem – her paints do not last long.

The ‘burbs.

Mm, here’s a handiwork. I’ve been making planters with coconut shells, this one’s new and is an ‘upside down planter’. Very nifty. I’ll see how it goes.

May 4, 2014
Tiny House People
I stumbled across this film a couple of months ago and then this film today. Both of these creative endeavours made me proud to be (almost) able to call myself a tiny house person.

My favourite person was the girl at around 13 minutes along in the second film by Kirsten Dirksen. I loved her adaptability, her approach to her lifestyle, her creative storage and her use of a chamber pot! I love that she built it herself, and sourced her material from the tip.

I am anticipating the onset of tiny house living for several reasons:
- simplicity (not crowding our lives with stuff)
- simplicity (not filling our time with sorting/cleaning large spaces or large amounts of stuff)
- simplicity (not having to worry about or think about or chase after money)
- Quality over quantity. We have fewer, but higher quality items and fittings around our home, this makes us feel good. We are able to support ethical & often local companies.
- Adventure. We are not forced into a lifestyle of 9-5 work to pay off a mortgage or even have to save for an overpriced home (the honest truth is that housing and land these days is excessively, unnecessarily expensive – it’s not worth getting into debt over.)
- Autonomy. We can move as we wish, live as we wish. There are expenses along the road, but they are far less than rent etc.
- By far, though, the greatest benefit to living small is being able to be together, because of all the above reasons and also because the smallness of the space forces us together. It’s nice.
Currently we are struggling a little bit. We are just over half way through our bus build and while each step excites us there is still a lot of building to go. We are tossing up our living arrangements, unsure whether to move into a rental as there is uncertainty about how long this project will take. Sophia will/might be going to school this year and so plans are all ambiguous.

I am not someone unwelcome to changing plans, I am liable to toss a project in the air if it is ‘not working’, I guess it is harder for me to persist and while I am determined to persist with building our bus (there is no other option there) I am just investigating the different ways we could reach the end goal…all in one piece.

We will see what we will see.
January 19, 2014
Large House vs Small House

Most of you following this blog will know that we are making the shift from a small rental house to an un petite bus-house. A bus-house with an uber generous 23 square metres of living space on board.

Australia has one of the largest house sizes in the world with free standing house sizes sitting at about 243m2. With an average of only 2.66 people living in these large houses that leaves a lot of free space.

While the UK has a very small house size (at an average of 76m2). That popular program Grand Designs often raises the hopeless case of their upper-middle-class renovators and self builders in finding those ‘hard to find’ bits of land for their dream houses, these people manage, in increasingly creative ways, to fill vacant blocks with floors and walls and rooves. These vacuous spaces are then relegated to housing just a couple of bodies on a regular basis.

In an increasingly populated world people seem to continue to want their own space.

Australia has a lot of space and I guess that is why our homes are bigger, but to what end?

What is the use of these large expanses of dead space, which are designed to consume things instead of produce things?

I have been resisting normalised compulsive spending urges since knowing we were drastically reducing our house size.

In a home this tiny every little object matters and every square centimetre of storage must be seized upon. The ‘bedrooms’ are only as large as they need to be. Both kids have a private space, their bunks, which equal about 2 square metres each, with room enough only to sit. Every part of the bus is shared, except for the drivers seat, we have only one table with enough room only for us four, and there is one lounge. Our living space however will be huge. It will be the great Australian outdoors. In this bus the outdoors are very close. I was sitting in it yesterday while the rain poured down and it felt very much like I was sitting inside a waterfall. It was beautiful and sensory and I relish that kind of living.

Downsizing does not feel cramped or like a negative lifestyle shift. It is better! It is better than living where we were. With a cut in living space comes a closeness to the outdoors and a reduction in things that we never really needed in the first place. Cutting down on space, and ergo things, should not scare anyone. It is quite liberating.

A big benefit of renovating a very small area is the way in which we can inject quality into it. Rather than a big kitchen, for example, we can have a well designed, well made kitchen with a high standard of materials.

This last point is very important to me in my quest for a sustainable life. Ultimately a sustainable life is not fast or big or full of things or expensive, but it is a life of excellence. That is the strength of sustainable living.

I would be rather interested to see the trend of housing in Australia in the future. I wonder if a nomadic lifestyle, like ours, might become more popular as house prices continue to soar, I hope people will learn to live in smaller spaces, leaving more room to live outside.

July 22, 2013