Off Grid Lifestyle Expo- an old way of living- a new way of thinking. This year the event is on Saturday and Sunday the 3rd and 4th of September 2022 at The Goomeri Showgrounds.
You can access all the information from their homepage here. https://www.offgridexpo.com.au/
I was fortunate enough to have been invited back again this year as a guest speaker.
I was the first speaker at their first event last year being only one of many people who had information to share. I suspect 2022 will be much bigger because more people are becoming more interested in being more self-reliant regardless of where they live.
As stated on the Home page
“The Off Grid Lifestyle Expo is based on a system and lifestyle designed to help people function without the support of infrastructure, such as an Electricity Grid. For example, off-grid can be a stand-alone system or microgrids typically used to provide a smaller community with electricity.
The term OFF THE GRID means: not connected to public utilities like electricity or supplied water, choosing to live in a self-sufficient manner. Many people also grow their own food and have learnt crafts and skills to assist with this maintaining their lifestyle such as, weaving and spinning, bread and cheese making, pottery and carpentry, often reusing, recycling and repurposing existing items to reduce waste”.
There will be a plethora of information available, including speakers on natural healthcare to composting toilets and many subjects in between. I will again speak on home energy efficient design and this year I will also include energy efficient appliances and practises within the home. … I can hardly wait to hear what I’ve got to say.
There will be stalls with food and exhibitors which you can find listed here
https://www.offgridexpo.com.au/exhibitors/
When I was much younger, I remember hearing the saying that “the only thing you can be sure of is that you can’t be sure of anything”. 
It is becoming more apparent that the cost of living worldwide has increased dramatically in recent times making accommodation less affordable as well as the cost of food and energy becoming a real issue for some families.
Supply chains worldwide are beginning to fail, and transport is increasingly becoming a bigger cost component in every manufactured commodity.
It is becoming more obvious as the days pass that our “food and our water is not necessarily sure”. Those who prepare early for events that they anticipate will be better equipped in the years to come than those who don’t.
We had a fellow turn up at our place several weeks ago who asked if our property may be for sale. He advised that he was impressed with what he had seen driving in and said in no uncertain terms that the price of a property that he was seeking to purchase was not an issue. Not everyone is as motivated as he may be, but more and more people are seeking the simple life which is more easily accommodated for on land with a little bigger parcel of ground than a 400 square metre house block offers.
We recently went from being paid $0.17 a kilowatt hour from AGL for our exported energy to being paid $0.00. In that same letter it was advised that our electricity cost had risen about 2 cents per kilowatt hour which is the second price rise this year.
With the doubling of the population in our area over the last 30 years and not a single new dam being built to collect and store water for the increased use, there must come a time when this lack of planning becomes a cause for serious concern.
Alas that hasn’t happened yet, not within the ruling class who control what infrastructure is built, maintained or retired.
Knowing that we have the capacity to collect and store enough water for our needs without any further expenses such as quarterly water bills is gratifying. We have a header tank that we pump water to using solar energy through the day. Mother nature’s gravity, ie, natural buoyancy, gives us enough head pressure for showers etcetera for us to run night and day for a month to six weeks without needing energy for pressure pumps at any time including pumping water to flush the toilet at night.
After one 1 ½ hour pumping session we have water and head pressure for our whole household for 4 to 6 weeks.
Not everyone can do everything, but most people can probably do a little more than they are already doing. People who live in suburbia and have enough land to put in a garden can be usually more successful than those out in the wild. Successful garden crops are more easily obtained when not having to battle with deer, wallabies and bandicoots.
The reality is that you can’t really go completely off grid because you can’t build your own tractor or produce the energy needed for it to operate. There are economies of scale that makes the industrial world the successful enterprise it is. We need to have our feet a little in both camps at the same time. No one really goes completely off-grid, nor would you ever want to, but being a little bit more self-reliant is good for the heart and in this day & age a little easier on your pocket.
There is some satisfaction in knowing that you are self-reliant enough to survive foreseeable economic catastrophes but there are many other reasons why moving off the grid a little more each day is desirable. My wife has recently learnt to make soap and not because it’s in short supply in the retail stores. Making your own soap allows you to have affordable soap in the house without the undesirable chemicals such as sodium lauryl sulfate included in the mix. Sure you can buy that sort of chemical free soap but it’s much less expensive and rewarding to make “in house”.
A household becoming more self-reliant, ie, what most people call getting off the grid, includes having your own source of electrical energy and water supply. Being even more self-sufficient is getting further off-grid and not being completely reliant on the commercial infrastructure of our society.
Stock piling toilet paper is not an effective survival technique, nor does it make you an off-grid guru.
Everyone has their own idea about the off-grid lifestyle and how far they are prepared to go or even want to go.
There is something fulfilling knowing that you are eating unsprayed food from your garden (like the peas in pic 2), washing with chemical free soap (pic 3) or being oblivious and unaware that the power has gone down because you’re not on the grid.
There is something good about not paying nearly $2,000 a year for water rates and having long showers anytime you want knowing that your tanks will be full next week because there’s rain coming in.
That’s living the off-grid lifestyle, … and yes, …I do recommend it.
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John Lynn