Case Study: Open Field Co-Living
a ~15 person homestead in Castlemaine, Australia
This is a guest post from Nicola Beatrix. Nicola and her partner took on the monumental task of building a communal home from scratch in the Australian outback. Even if you don’t share the dream of butchering your own kangaroo meat, we think you’ll find inspiration in the way Open Field Co-Living designed their community, and practical tips for getting your own communal project off the ground.
This is part of an ongoing series of deep dives on coliving spaces. To see others, visit the Supernuclear directory. If you want to contribute a case study of your community, awesome! Please find guidelines for submission in this post.
Name Open Field Co-Living
Dates operating Property purchased Feb 2021, community started in June 2024
Location Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia. On Djaara country, 30 mins from the small regional city of Bendigo, 1.5 hours from the major city of Melbourne.
Ownership Owned by two residents on a single title as 'Joint Tenants', other residents rent from owners
Governance All residents are equally involved in the governance of the household, land & community. Consensus for important decisions, sub-groups for chores, do-ocracy for everything else. Only owners make decisions about and are responsible for permanent infrastructure.
Residents: 12 adults & 4 kids
The idea for Open Field Co-Living was conceived in a small, dark living room in a sharehouse in inner city Melbourne. The damp cold wind was constantly being sucked through the house via the broken kitchen window. But we were too scared to ask the landlord to repair it, lest they arbitrarily end the lease. It was the 7th time I had moved house in 5 years. Almost every time, the 12 month lease had ended and the house had been sold to a developer. To anyone who has rented in Australia, this story probably sounds sadly familiar, right?
As we sat there huddling in the cold on a thrifted couch, we thought, there has got to be a better way to do housing.
Fast forward 3 years, and we now live in a wheelchair-accessible hempcrete passive house that we designed and built for co-living. After navigating a mountain of challenges, we are a collective of 16 humans: 12 adults, 3 toddlers, 1 older kid, 2 dogs and 4 chickens. Though this project tested our resolve in more ways than we can detail here, we managed to build our dream home and a community in which we’re excited to raise the next generation.
Origins
Dan and I met at ‘Students of Sustainability Conference’ back in our Uni days, and got together a few years down the track, after mentoring together at a family-friendly ‘Wild by Nature Camp’. While sharing a lift home from camp, we both began raving about how cool it would be to buy an old-age home and convert it into a vibrant co-living community - that’s when I knew I’d found my partner in crime!
We read Peter Mares’ book ‘No Place Like Home’ (Mares, 2018) together, analyzing the systemic causes of Australia’s housing crisis. Like most social justice & environmental issues, we could see that it was unlikely that governments, councils and businesses would do enough to create the stable and sustainable housing that people - and our planet - needs. So, we decided to take action into our own hands and demonstrate another model of what sustainable, socially connected and secure housing could look like.
With Dan’s experience as a home energy assessor and eco-building designer, the opportunity to build our own sustainable house with a design that would actually suit the needs of co-living was an opportunity too good to be missed. And with a baby on the way, we longed for a warm, stable home, and to share the parenting journey with a community of supportive friends.
The challenge that we set ourselves was to create a home that:
Allows multiple families and individuals to live together, with a balance of communal facilities and private space
Integrates seamlessly with the permaculture systems of a semi-off-grid homestead, with easy access to the gardens, orchards, and water systems
Supports a net zero transition: uses almost no energy to heat and cool, and avoids high embodied energy materials such as concrete and polystyrene
Is resilient to the effects of climate change: heatwaves, droughts, floods, and resource scarcity
Creates a calm and healthy sanctuary for its occupants, with rich natural, recycled and local materials that are breathable and chemical-free
Provides universal accessibility, making the house safer and easier for people with disabilities or injuries, older people, and families with young children
Is viable within current laws, building standards, council regulations, zoning and financial systems
The result was a hempcrete home with 8 bedrooms and two guest tiny houses with a capacity to house 10-15 residents. The large amount of north-facing windows fill the house with natural light, maximizing energy efficiency, and connecting it out to the gardens and bush beyond. The main resident bathroom was designed with the shower/bath & toilet separated from the double sinks, meaning up to five people can use the bathroom at any one time without impacting privacy.
All of the bedrooms and the resident’s main bathroom are situated along a single hallway on the west side of the house, which creates a private, quiet, ‘west wing’ for residents to retreat to. The large kitchen, pantry, living areas, study, guest room and accessible bathroom form the public communal space in the east wing. Having all of the bedrooms along the same hallway, and just one kitchen were very intentional decisions. We’ve observed from visiting other communities that having a physical design that encourages incidental social interaction is key to sustaining a sense of continued connection and togetherness.
Financing & recruiting
As the quickest way to get this project off the ground, we use a basic ‘joint tenancy’ model of ownership, presenting as a typical hetero-family. Building one big ‘family home’ fitted seamlessly within current building regulations, council zoning laws, tenancies and standard financing, so the permits for the house build were approved quickly. We wanted to avoid that dreaded bottleneck that the wise Phil Levin from Supernuclear describes here.
If a key part of our dream was for our daughter to grow up surrounded by other children and families, then having a house that would only be ready by the time she’s old enough to move out, would make the whole thing kind of pointless, right?
During our initial research, we were surprised to read that of the 10% of communities that actually get off the ground, almost all were founded and funded by just one or two people with a strong vision, who found others who shared that vision to join at later stages (Christian, 2003). We knew this 'build it and they will come' approach would be much faster and smoother than starting with a large group, but it required taking on the financial risk ourselves to build the project. We trusted that we would find other like-minded souls to join us once it was ready for occupancy. Inspired by the ‘Radish’ model, we aimed to shift as much power as possible to the resident community members in terms of managing the household and property, leaving the owners with basic responsibilities such as paying the mortgage and making repairs.
By December 2023, after what felt like hundreds of hours of interviewing, we had the 8 bedrooms filled. Then just a few weeks later, four parties dropped out due to their life circumstances changing. We had to start from scratch again, frantically searching for compatible residents as the move-in date inched closer. With each passing week, as the builder’s invoices continued to roll in, the mortgage grew and grew, along with a sense of impending doom. We had maxed out our loan capacity and had run out of cash, but were not able to receive any rent until the house was finished. We had very carefully planned our budget and factored in a buffer in case of cost blow-out and interest rates rising, but that buffer simply vanished in a puff of smoke!
We had decided to build the hempcrete part of the house ourselves over 5 weeks of working bees and the help of many wonderful friends and natural building enthusiasts. It was an exhausting, yet rich community building exercise - 4 of the volunteers ended up moving in as housemates - but it still wasn’t enough to save the budget from blowing out. We never could have anticipated that over the course of the 2.5 years spent in planning and construction, that interest rates would rise ELEVEN times, and that supply shortages due to global conflict would push up the price of the build by 30% before we locked in the building contract. Adding fuel to the fire, by 2024 Australia had entered a cost of living crisis, which limited the level of rent that we could reasonably ask of residents to cover the mounting costs, leaving us in a really awkward position. We had no choice but to cover the substantial gap between income and expenses with our own personal wages, operating the property at an ongoing loss.
Thankfully, after a hell of a rollercoaster ride, just in the nick of time we filled the house with some wonderfully aligned people and moved in with the first round of residents in June 2024.
Inner Workings
The ease and flow of shared food has been a big highlight reported by residents and guests alike. Almost every night, we share a banquet of multiple, sumptuous dishes catering to everyone’s dietaries. With both vegans & paleo diets in the mix, some of us have found the challenge of cooking for 16 people with incompatible dietary preferences flustering, but generally I’ve been astonished at how well everyone has risen to the challenge. And thank goodness, at least a garden salad is something that we can all eat!
The homesteading part has been core to our vision of sustainable living here on 10 acres, with an aim to meet many of our needs more locally, organically, with lower food miles and CO2 emissions. And I’d say it’s also been the most fun part! Working bee days have been some of my favourite days here, and many others have expressed the same sentiment. With everyone working alongside each other in ambient company, feeling purposeful, and afterwards sharing a hearty lunch, there’s a sense of aliveness and satisfaction in working towards a shared vision that’s just unparalleled, much as Phil described in this post.
We have achieved a massive amount in our first few months thanks to each of us contributing 4 hours per week towards working bees and the support of work-exchange volunteers. We have built a large chicken pen and coop, expanded our chook flock, planted an orchard of 40 trees, butchered and preserved hundreds of kilos of wild kangaroo meat & tanned their hides, made sauerkraut from our own cabbages, set up a bushcraft space, built a cob rocket stove & outdoor fire bath, and grown an absolute butt-load of vegetables. ‘Many hands make light work’ has definitely been apt and I think we all appreciate how much easier it is to manage such a large house and homestead with so many people contributing.
For other chores, we have been trialling a system of ‘sub-groups’, and it seems to be operating like a well oiled machine. People know their roles and seem to take pride and responsibility for doing them well. Having distinct teams also makes it clear who to ask when you need something or notice something that falls in their realm. We love to pompously joke around that we are Ministers, like we’re in Parliament, it makes it feel more fun! For example, 'Minister for Hot Stuff’ (fire safety warden) or ‘Minister for the Good Shit’ (composting team).
We all contribute $100 per week to our house ‘dues’ (we call it ‘kitty’ here in Aus). We have several communal bank accounts for different purposes (eg. food, bills, garden), and a treasury team who manage the budgets. The main causes of tension so far have been confusion about where the ‘sub-group’ responsibilities end and ‘do-ocracy’ begins. For example, if there is a team managing the shopping & finances, but you want to buy a big jar of olives for your pizza party tonight - do you need to ask permission from the shopping crew, or can you go ahead and buy it, do-ocracy style? So it’s generally working well, but we could do with a few tweaks in our systems.
We have 1.5 hour meetings every week, which is quite a feat when you’re wrangling three toddlers at the same time. (Huge shout out here to the commitment & epic multi-tasking skills of the toddler parents!). I think we’ve made the mistakes that many communities make in the early days of spending too much time on the heavy logistical stuff and not enough focus on sharing play, connection & fun, but I think we’re learning to find more of a balance. We all completed a ‘Compassionate Communication’ (also known as ‘Non-violent Communication’) course together which has helped give us all a shared language and ‘toolkit’ for understanding each other & navigating conflict, but we are all of course totally learning as we go.
One of the biggest joys of living here has been the shared parenting. We made sure to discuss a lot of topics around parenting during the interviews, but we didn’t make any formal agreements about sharing the parenting load before moving in together. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see how the culture of collective care has emerged relatively organically and easefully without a whole lot of formal agreements or discussions. For example, one parent might supervise all three toddlers in the bath, while one washes dishes and the other waters the garden. From this kind of informal support, more organised care swaps emerged. Our housemate looks after our child 1 day per week, and then one of us looks after hers 1 day each week in exchange. The arrangement leaves each of us with an extra week day to work or rest, and the kids enjoy playing and having adventures together, developing a relationship more akin to a sibling or cousin. I think the fact that each of us toddler parents has two child seats in our car (or bike trailer, in our case) is a pretty cute sign of the level of mutual support we enjoy here as parents.
In Conclusion
If I had my time again, I would explore other models of ownership and financing that reduce the singular pressure on two individuals and one relationship to make the project work. But in the end, it did help us get the project off the ground, and if we hadn’t taken on that huge risk, this community would likely not exist.
Overall, we have found this way of living to be rich with a sense of community, support, connection, good food & purpose. It’s not without challenges, of course. We know that there will always be some level of conflict and personality differences. We know that (re-)learning how to live together in community, will be an ongoing life-long project. But as long as we are courageous enough to turn towards it and keep learning, it feels totally worth it. Because watching our child giggle & squeal as she jumps on the trampoline with her two little housemate-siblings, just fills us with delight. Because coming home to hugs from friends and deep chats over a home-grown meal is just the richest way to live.
Nicola Beatrix is a children's therapist, farmer, passionate environmentalist, critical thinker & change-maker. She is one of the founders and residents at Open Field Co-living. You can find her tales of co-living, natural building, and cute pictures of home-grown vegetables & children on Facebook and Instagram.
Sources:
Christian, D.L., ‘Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Eco-villages & Intentional Communities, New Society Publishers, 2003.
Unknown, Ownership: How it Works, University of Technology Sydney www.collaborativehousing.org.au/how-it-works-ownership
Levin, P., The Radish Friend LLC Model Explained, July 29, 2022.
Mares, P. No Place Like Home: Repairing Australia’s Housing Crisis, The Text Publishing Company, 2018.
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this was an extremely insightful read into the challenges and joys of co-living. It is absolutely fascinating that someone took the time to make this happen - it creates so much hope! Thank you for sharing ☺️
"We had decided to build the hempcrete part of the house ourselves over 5 weeks of working bees and the help of many wonderful friends and natural building enthusiasts."
The Hemp aspect was actually coordinated by Will Brain of Hempcrete Victoria with ths use of our inhouse labour alongside volunteers, and around one year of consultancy and advice on detailing in pre-construction.