About 4000 people visiting Eldorado would not have caused much extra energy use in the town on Saturday – they were visiting to learn the best way to effectively live off the grid.
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The Off-Grid Living Festival covered a wide range of topics from solar energy, to sustainable farming, to producing food and drinks.
Event manager Kate Nottingham said it was an amazing day at the festival.
“The short talks tent has been going all day, it been absolutely packed,” she said.
“There’s plenty of workshops, people doing hands-on, interactive stuff.
“There’s lots of handmade wares, really really creative stuff that you can’t see in other places, lots of traditionally skilled people and some sustainability energy stuff.”
Experts in off-grid living travelled from all across Australia to share their stories in Eldorado.
The inaugural event was held all day Saturday at Centennial Park.
Those who attended learnt how to make their own dreamcatchers, make fish skin leather with traditional tools and churn their own butter.
“People get motivation and new skills and get some new ideas to either simplify their own life and make things better for themselves, but also the environment,” Ms Nottingham said.
“People love it, that idea of off-grid living and the freedom that comes with it.
“They’re all here looking for that feeling … there’s a lot of back to the basics attitudes.”
People love it, that idea of off-grid living and the freedom that comes with it.
- Kate Nottingham
A range of guest speakers also shared their expertise in living off-grid, including PhD student Rachel Goldlust who has been researching off-grid living across Australia as part of her studies.
In her latest article for Overland magazine, she said people had a long tradition of of living simple and sustainable lives.
“This attitude involves a longing to commune with what is seen as a more ‘natural’ lifestyle, alongside a strident desire to take control over one’s needs and wants,” she said.
“As my research has traced, getting away from it all and finding the ‘simple life’ in Australia is a tradition that predates the millennium, and even Nimbin and the 1970s.”
Other exhibitors at the festival included toilet composting, off-grid lighting, how to build a healthy sustainable hemp house, Mongolian yurts, and alternative farming such as organic fertilisers and water-collecting tree guards.
To ensure the lowest environmental impact, festival organisers set strict rules of no single use plastic or polystyrene and no plastic bags.
All packaging for goods sold had to be re-usable or recyclable.
No drinks in plastic bottles, nor unheallthy soft drinks, were sold to patrons on the day.
The huge success of the first-ever off-grid festival means it will return in future years.
“It will be held annually and about the same time of year, probably in May next year,” Ms Nottingham said,
