Meet the SpurTopians This is our sustainable-living story which we would like to share with you to provide information, ideas, inspiration and courage to take the first step in your life. Being less reliant on the system and becoming self-sufficient by  growing food, utilizing recycled material and using the urban environment to our benefit, is our passion and  lifestyle. We have created "a small kingdom"  in a rental property in Brisbane, where we are living a fulfilling life in  complete happiness. Enjoying every moment of life, a sense of belonging and a ..read more

Check this video and be inspired to create your Utopia! Our family produce more food than we can eat, we are energy positive, water sufficient and nearly waste free in less than two years. Come and stay with us and we will teach you. We Do: - Practical workshops and talks - Excursions and Tours - Self-sufficient Skills Internship Programs - Digital Detox & Wellbeing Retreats - Airbnb and Farm Stays ..read more

Divine drink and medicine We always thought that making mead (an alcoholic drink from honey) was a complicated and long process. The opposite is true – it’s very easy and can be very fast. The mead we have been making at home takes about 1 hour to prepare and is ready to drink in about 10 days. Here is the recipe of our homemade mead. Mead Recipe: 1.5kg honey 4 litres water a small piece of ginger (about 50g) 5g sachet of brewer's yeast (available from Woolworths or buy mead yeast from a brew shop) Mead on tap Boil honey, water and ginger for about half an hour to get fla ..read more

A herb spiral is a great idea to grow herbs on a mound of dirt. However, in hot and dry weather with extra radiant heat from stones even herbs struggle to survive. To keep them alive a regular watering and a fair a bit of water is required. For that reason a self-watering way sounds like the way to go. But how to make it work in a spiral with steeping soil for herbs to grow? Being an engineer I came up with a very clever but simple design idea which should work marvellously. So here is a description how we designed and built our herb spiral. The spiral has three water reservoir levels as sho ..read more

We were privileged to do an ABC Radio interview with Terri Begley on how sustainable garden can reduce waste. Listen to the interview ABC interview - Sustainable garden ..read more

TEDx talk in Ispwich What a great privilege to present our eight year sustainable living journey at famous TEDx talk. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to share ideas worth spreading and find inspiration. Watch a 16 minute video of the TEDx talk ..read more

Landscaping taking shape In the last half a year we have been very busy establishing our Spurtopia Homestead. It is ever so exciting especially when you do something you are absolutely passionate about - materializing our vision and creating a beautiful reality and future for our family. It has taken a lot of planning, sketching and thinking to get it right and make it work. So far we have: Installed solar power on the roof (6kW system); Solar hot water system ($700); Self-watering planter boxes to quickly start growing our food; Established several garden beds; Planted 25 native tr ..read more

We are very excited to announce that we recently (May 2016) bought a property.  Spurtopia Homestead  After a long search for a suitable location and land size we were lucky to find a property (a double story five bedroom house with a swimming pool and a Bali hut) on one acre of land in Fernvale. For those who don’t know, Fernvale is a beautiful small country town near Lake Wivenhoe, about 60 km west of Brisbane. We are so thrilled about the property as we can see so much potential in it. There is plenty of land, an acre, which is just the right size for us to grow our orga ..read more

We had to move out of our rented place in inner city Brisbane. Our very good friends who are like our “Australian parents”, offered us the opportunity to live temporarily with them on an acreage close to Jimboomba until we find a new home to buy. So “the deal” is we can live in a shed for free in exchange for some help on their property. This, to us, sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it? There are so many people who own a property with a lot of space but do not have the time or strength to look after it, while there are many people who are young, willing to work and have time in their h ..read more

"Happy Birthday" present Our daughter Lada turned 3 year old recently and she got the best birthday present she could imagine. On the day of her birthday (18 April), Zlata, her new little sister (48cm, 2.99kg) came to the world to personally wish her ‘Happy Birthday’. She was born in a peaceful home environment fairly quickly (less than 2 hours) early that morning. It was an amazingly positive experience for all three of us, especially when we did not need any assistance. Daddy (Roman) turned into a midwife and managed to “catch” Zlata and cut her umbilical cord, while Lada turned ..read more