Calamity Jill: Living off the Grid with Jill Redwood from ABC Open Gippsland on Vimeo.
https://open.abc.net.au/explore/82086Calamity Jill: Living off the Grid
By Rachael Lucas · 3 mins
Jill Redwood has lived a remarkable life. As one of the original alternative lifestyle' pioneers to move to Goongerah in remote East Gippsland over 30 years ago, she has devoted her life to saving the local forests and environment more generally.
A Jill of all trades, Jill built her own house on her property and lives entirely off the grid with no mains power or town water, mobile reception or television. Living on around $80 a week, Jill has over sixty animals to keep her company and an abundant garden that out serves as an organic supermarket right at her doorstep. Her main expenses are animal feed and the rates on her property.
When I walk into Jill's home, it's like walking into the home of Calamity Jane.
There are stacked books and chests of draws with antique collections of ornaments, teddy bears and a rogue's gallery of pioneers, outlaws and pet portraits lining the walls and shelves. Animal furs are used as rugs, pumpkins and trinkets hang from the rafters between pots and pans, dainty curtains and old tea cups. There's even an old honkytonk piano!
The house and neighbouring sheds are a museum of 19th and 20th century bits and pieces where a lifetime of rusting, salvaged items had been filed into collections, just in case they are revived into service one day.
Generating all her own solar power and collecting water from the local creek via a remarkable water wheel contraption which pumps water to the house and garden, Jill has devised unique systems of self sufficiency. Nothing goes to waste, everything is either composted or recycled somehow.
Jill ventures to town only when she has to, but can exist without visiting the shops for around three to six months. She has a larder filled with pickles and preserves, makes her own apple juice and has 19th century solutions to almost all maintenance problems.
Living on a diet free of refined and processed foods has given Jill a legacy of good health too. Her skin, eyes and fitness is incredible for her age and she never gets sick.
Jill is without doubt the most resourceful woman I've ever met, a walking encyclopedia of knowledge on practical survival and living skills, plants and animals. Her only 21st century vice seems to be her love of the internet, which Jill needs to earn her living from her job working for Environment Gippsland and as a freelance writer.
That, and the odd craving for chocolate, corn chips and cider!
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