Auravale

Auravale

The first Community I visited was the isolated and scarcely populated ‘Auravale’, in North Queensland, just out of Cooktown. The remaining residents here are champions of besting the odds and creating ingenious alternative technology. Look at their solar panels…

These ones power
the communal house
where Wwoofers stay.

And the batteries
where the power is stored.

The three lovely kids who currently live at Auravale are home schooled. In this photo they are with some friends from the nearby town one night when we had a bonfire.

The get-over-your-modesty-loo is flushed by filling a water container from the nearby folded hose and simply tipping it in! The pure spring water at Auravale is piped from two streams that run through the property, the pipe runs a few K’s up for water pressure. Some residents (definitely Rainforest John) also have water tanks, but spring water is plentiful in the wet season.

The water is heated in recycled hot water systems propped over a fireplace. It takes about 20 minutes to heat up a bath full. Fiona super-mother is washing some blankets too big for hand washing. I call it foot washing.

Like so many dwellings at Auravale this one is empty but this is the construction look of most. Recycled local materials and not many walls (ahhh good old Queensland, got to love a state where you don’t need walls) and the essential mosquito nets!

I really wish I had a photo of the orchard. The 30 year-old fruit trees here were laden with every tropical fruit under the sun. You could survive purely on the fruit. I’m pretty sure local Mic lived soley on fruit, wild pig and a few occasional extras from town.

Lots of past love has gone into Auravale

So what happened? Seems there are many different reasons for the collapse of the thriving Auravale community in the 80’s: Change in government legislation that cut off support payments to rural areas, communards not being able to own a share in the land and consequently feeling less investment in it’s future, and of course, good old personal differences, the fate of many a promising Intentional Community.

Sustainability seems trickier in extremely remote areas were there is no option to earn small amounts of money additional to sustaining yourself and family. Even people that have managed total self-sufficiency are greatly helped by the ability to earn money on the side to cover unavoidable dealings with government such as taxes and rates. The remaining Auravale residents (five adults) earn money by travelling long distances to occasional work. Thankfully this predicament is easier to overcome these days with internet access which often provides community residents a way of earning money from home. Lots of this was going on at Crystal Waters, my next stop.

Auravale was difficult to leave, literally. Getting in was fine but the Queensland rain raised the stream crossing and the submarine (Chester) got stuck. Submarine, PAH!

Sunrises used to symbolize the end of an all night adventure, living in a van has given me a whole new appreciation for them.

Next I headed off to the thriving community Crystal Waters which lies just out of Maleny north of Brisvegas...