A 1980s Bushland Home Built Entirely From Recycled Materials

This mudbrick Healesville, Victoria residence is fully one particular of a kind—a merchandise of its fully recycled product and handmade development by proprietors Robert and Judy Holland. 

The pair obtained the bushland block in the mid 1980s as a completely blank slate. ‘Its attraction was evident with its abundance of wildlife and spectacular landscape with sights out towards the mountains,’ suggests Judy. 

A rigger by trade, Robert was on the lookout to generate a feasible different to the numerous ‘cookie cutter’ homes of the time by employing a totally recycled product palette.

He started from scratch, employing mudbricks and rock excavated from the assets with dynamite to build the partitions up to 45 ft high.  

Salvaged jarrah and ironbark timbers aspect inside of and out, including substantial beams salvaged from Sydney’s Manly pier for the duration of a refurbishment in the late ‘80s.

‘We named our eldest son Jarrah mainly because of this and due to the fact they are this kind of a sturdy and steady tree,’ states Judy. 

Other recycled components involve salvaged baltic pine on the cathedral ceilings and partitions aged lanolin soaked flooring sourced from sheep shearing sheds in NSW antique home windows with their primary glass and Victorian skirting boards.

A wagon wheel saved from an aged steam tractor is built-in into the upper storey wall, allowing heat from the lounge room fireplace to movement into the upstairs bed room. Even some of the bolts in the residence came from aged phone poles. 

It took several decades for this home to be finished, but the mammoth endeavor was manufactured achievable thanks to Robert’s tenacity and vision. 

‘Robert is intense with his capabilities,’ states Judy. ‘Even if he has to go absent and have a think about a answer to a little something, he is generally in a position to arrive again to it and translate it into reality.’

The home’s title, Kalamunda House, arrives from the Aboriginal words Cala (house) and Munnda (forest), thus that means, ‘A residence in the forest.’