In the Australian state with the least daily sunshine, a small community project with a big vision is becoming a reality, but challenges lie ahead.
When you live in a remote area, the luxury of popping down to the shops to pick up more fruit and vegetables can mean hours of travel. Pair that with a bitterly cold climate with a short growing season and food choices become limited, with flow on health impacts for a remote community.
So when the Great Lake Community Centre at Miena in Central Tasmania put out a survey to their one hundred members about what was most needed to support their remote population, the answer seemed straightforward.
They wanted a garden that the community could use together. A communal greenhouse where they could grow their own fresh produce, close to home for nutritious, healthy food.
This became the vision, with key committee members putting skills old and new to the test to get a project that wasn’t at all straightforward, off the ground.
One such committee member is Toni Glowacki, who moved to the Great Lake region five years ago. She is just one of the many volunteers who has invested time seeking support and guidance to keep the community centre improving every year, with several successes rewarding the group’s perseverance. Two years ago, with the finance and grant expertise of Jason Garrett, a Director at the Great Lake Hotel on hand to help, they got to work applying for grants. Their first applications were not successful.
Toni explains, “We went to a meeting in Bridgewater and they explained the issue. They said heating was a limiting factor. That the costs to heat a normal greenhouse in central Tasmania were prohibitive. They prompted us to instead think outside the box.”
With this feedback, the committee started looking to the other side of the world, where similar climate conditions created issues for greenhouses. Their research uncovered that in China and Canada, they use passive solar greenhouse technology, where hot air from the top of the greenhouse is pushed into a geothermal battery for storage. When the temperature in the greenhouse drops, fans pull the hot air back up to maintain the growing environment. This technology excited the Great Lake community, from its efficiency to its environmentally responsible heating, with a battery that charges hot air. But adapting the technology to their Tasmanian location needed the help of experts.
What they needed were engineers. Experts who could help, for example, with snow and wind loading, designing the most efficient solar greenhouse with the technology and factoring in the Tasmanian weather. This wasn’t a run of the mill project and finding an engineering firm willing to help this small community was no easy feat. That was until the local council thought of Paloma Segura at HED Consulting, where she is a part of a small engineering and design team in Hobart.
“It’s such an interesting project with a groundbreaking solution for the Australian market that I was immediately on board. These types of projects that bring together sustainability, technology, the natural environment and a strong sense of community connection, have such a positive impact on everyone involved.”
Paloma Segura – HED Consulting
This project also excited her colleagues, who are passionate about Tasmanian design within this unique environment. With Paloma’s engineering and Dave Abel, lead building designer at HED Consulting, they tapped into the Great Lake local knowledge and explored the ideas that would make the passive solar greenhouse a project both council and grant providers wouldn’t be able to look past.
The HED Consulting team created plans that included adding a mezzanine floor, improving efficiency, and factoring in all weather events to prepare the certificates needed for the grant submissions. Toni and Jason prepared the grant applications to the Tasmanian Community Fund, the Cattle Hill Community Fund and the Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants and awaited the decisions that would determine the viability of the solar greenhouse project.
Their hard work has paid off with grant approvals and goodwill donations from business partners and community members, raising just under $1 million towards the project. The 25-strong volunteer community are now invested in learning every detail of operating the solar greenhouse in their isolated, remote location. They’re united in their purpose of growing food, creating inclusiveness, and improving health and wellbeing, all with a sustainable blueprint.
Success, however is still a way off and not guaranteed, with current world events creating hurdles beyond the grant approvals. Several suppliers have pulled out, costs are increasing and now petrol costs are on the rise, which creates issues with such a remote build location. This resourceful community will need to keep fighting to find further funding partners to make the project a reality.
The committee are seeking funding for the $10,000 IT computer system to operate the greenhouse to have maximum efficiency and less human intervention to monitor and make adjustments. Plans need to be finalised for approvals and construction costs are likely to increase as time goes on. It’s a big task for a small volunteer team who are not giving up.
What keeps them going is knowing that the passive solar greenhouse design will give two or even three growing seasons each year for fresh produce that can help improve the health of their small and remote community. Toni has noticed energy and excitement in their little community growing beyond Miena.
“Everyone is coming together to learn how to be greenhouse gardeners, and the wider communities who also reside on the lake are getting excited as word travels about such a sustainable project happening in their part of the world”.
Toni Glowacki
The Great Lake community is optimistic that the plan for a build completion slated in 2023 is possible with their passion and commitment pushing for success. This project could, quite unintentionally, put this small community in the middle of Tasmania firmly on the map; an example of technology and community working together for a sustainable future, perhaps where it’s least expected.
