Find woodworking sheds, teachers and organisations to learn essential handywoman skills

• Shedding (image opposite)@ The Railway Shed, Mullumbimby, NSW. Meet the awesome Sophie, her team of volunteers and join one of her workshops. Read about my expereince at Upskill here.
• SEA HQ is a the headquarters for Kym Oconnell for all things Tiny, Sustainability, Community and most recently Real Estate. See her bio here.
• Master Trades Woman, Author, Woodwork for Women Carpenter & Joiner Patt Gregory runs workshops at various locations around the Gold Coast and Northern Rivers. See events page for more info.
• National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) supports tradeswomen and apprentices  in their trade journeys. 
• TAFE offer trade certificates and encourgae and support women in acquring a Certificates in construction. We have encountered some wonderful teachers and written about the expereince here.
• Bower Tiny Homes
  Australia’s Only Hands-on Tiny House Building Course with Reclaimed Materials! They have saved over seven tonnes of building materials from landfill in the process of building seven Tiny Houses since they first introduced the course in 2014.

Websites, Facebook, Youtube there are an abundance of wonderful tiny home online places to get inspired, learn and connect with others.

1) Websites

Park My Tiny Home (image opposite)
Briony and her team connect Tiny Home owners with places to park their Tinys plus tons of resources via a membership platform. A tiny home owner herself she has a regular, highly informative free newsletter and has helped many people get started on their tiny home journey.

Fred’s Tiny Homes (image opposite)
Fred Schultz, based in Castlemaine Victoria is a leader in the Tiny Home community through his online Tiny House University. He teaches others DIY Tiny, manufactures tiny home trailers and advocates for the legalisation of tiny home living across all levels of government in Australia. He mantains an excellent database of local councils regulations for tiny homes.

2) Facebook private groups

Tiny Houses Brisbane & Gold Coast
A community group for people living in Tiny Homes or planning to live in one. A space to ask practical questions about everything Tiny related. The moderator has built her own Tiny and has been very active in the Tiny Home community for many years.
Land and Tiny Houses to rent or buy in Australia
Sister page to Tiny Houses Brisbane & Gold Coast,

Tiny Homes Australia
Another very good Facebook group with Q&As related to Tiny living

Tiny Houses Buy and Sell Australia
A mixture of secondhand and newly built Tinys.

Tiny Houses – Tiny Villages (Polkadot)
Created by a commited Tiny Homes advocate at the Sunshine Coast, a mixture of Tiny House advocacy and community living. A good space to find reposted mainstream news items focused on Tiny homes.

50+Women going Tiny
A great private group where women over 50 share their own Tiny homes journey and connect with questions and advice.

3) Youtube channels

Living Big in a Tiny House
The most exrensive catalouge of entertaining videos of people and their tiny homes from all over the world, enticing you into a tiny home lifestyle. Presented and complied with lots of enthusiasm by a New Zealand couple travelling the globe.

Tiny Dreamer
A very practical youtube video blog about living in a Tiny; great accounts of useful tips, tricks challenges.

There are hundreds of Tiny Home builders and construction companies to choose from.

WomanKind Common sista Kym Oconnell can recommend Alphaline Tiny Homes based in Brendale, Brisbane for their professional, quality build, and customer service.  Ben Parker in Home Sales can customise your build or choose from 16 designs on their website (Image opp: Alphaline Tiny Home in Brisbane Valley https://alphalinetinyhomes.com.au/models/

• The latest sustainable tiny home construction we’ve discovered is Jindi. Southern Cross University’s ReCirculator team are working with Studio Kite to divert plastic from local landfill and into 3D printing housing. Jindi is a cost-effective house construction solution that uses large 3D printers and recycled plastic waste to create insulated, waterproof forms. These forms, customizable in shape, are coated with high-performance cement and basalt fiber render, ensuring strength, longevity, safety, and minimal carbon footprint.
• Park My Tiny Home  Briony and her team have done the heavy lifting with their Tiny House Industry Awards (THIA). With 11 categories, Alphaline won the Best Luxury Build >$150k. Find out the 2023 Winners in each category here.
• Builder Aussie Tiny Homes have a helpful blog promoting  Tiny Living alongside their designs with the words…“People are slowly waking up to the world we live in and choosing to live differently. Living Tiny is not only about housing, it’s also about lifestyle. A lifestyle where spending time outdoors is more important than time indoors. Nature is more appealing than large residential homes and time and freedom are more valuable than objects and possessions.” Fabio Paulucci, Managing Director of Aussie Tiny Houses
• Jaye Irving of Barefoot Sustainable Design (image opp) is an architect interested in building with natural materials eg bamboo and grassroots green design. We love his 2 prototypes of not quite tiny homes called Terrapods.
• Karen Muras of Dandelion Home Designs has built or helped build 3 tiny homes. She has moved her tiny home 8 times and is a wealth of information and support around moving, building and council regulations. She is a WomanKind champion and and a great resource for all things tiny.

Australian Tiny Home Association
This is the peak body for Tiny Homes (ATHA) with branches in some states. Its purpose is to:

• to advocate for and work towards the legitimisation of tiny houses across all levels of government,
• to gather and provide information regarding the building of and dwelling in tiny houses in Australia,
• to promote a healthy social and community environment conducive to tiny house building and dwelling,
• to educate and collaborate with members promoting tiny house quality and safety,
• to network with related government agencies, educational institutions, development organisations, and private industry to address these stated purposes, and
• to fund raise to support the above activities.

Tiny Homes Foundation is a not for profit organisation dedicated to providing socially, environmentally and economically sustainable affordable housing solutions.

Their pilot tiny home project in Gosford, NSW is an Australian first based on a “Housing-first” principles that prioritises housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness and then wraps around additional supports and services as needed.

They recently received a grant from the Mercy Foundation to continue their work “solving homelessness one tiny home at a time.”

Sustainability, defined by the United Nations in 1987 is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainability, climate change and tiny home living are all interlinked.

In the last 30 years sustainability has come to mean many things to many people with a vast number of resources and projects. To us it means more than just sustaining and maintaing life, it means actively reimagining new ways to live with a smaller ecological footprint, tiny homes integrated into edible gardens – permaculture, syntropics – localising economies, restoring community, and regenerating our land, hearts and minds. 

Here is a snap shot of the many projects/organisations we’ve come across and can recommend. Please share yours!

• Global Ecovillage Network lists all the Ecovillages around the world organised into regions. Christy has hada  fabulous personal experience with Crystal Waters, Maleny QLD and Belinda is currently invested in Jagera Ecocommunity, Maclean, NSW (see image opposite).

• Earth Haven , Witheren, Gold Coast is building a sustainable living working display village, surrounded by acres of bush, natural creeks, permaculture gardens, cattle areas, and food forests. Open to the public as an education centre to create a new model for everything eco and sustainable, it seeks to teach the ‘how-to’ of living a Sustainable Lifestyle.

• Shambhala Living is a small family farm located on the Sunshine Coast of Australia with a small tiny home community offering yoga in their open air Yoga Shala and online permaculture courses . They are passionate about inspiring and educating others to live in harmony with the Earth.

• Common Knowledge is a non-profit social enterprise sharing skills for a truly sustainable homelife. We have been watching their sustainably-built, affordable and consciously-designed mobile tiny homes called TIGIN – Irish for small home – with great interest, They are built from cork and hemp and won the Wallpaper Design Award 2023.

• Sustainable Futures have developed a range of innovative and effective tools, processes and practises over 30 years to co-creating a sustainable and regenerative future. Pete Cuming, founder aong with his partner Eshana Bragg, Ecopsychologist and a team of experts consult to community groups, large organisations and governments. Jagera Ecocommunity in Maclean, northern NSW, is one of their projects of which Belinda is a part of.

• Local Futures and it’s founder, Helena Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the worldwide localization movement. They raise awareness with  films, books, toolkits, blog, podcast, webinars, workshops, conferences and campaigns about the power of ‘going local’ as a key strategy for restoring ecological, social and spiritual wellbeing. helping to build an international movement for systemic change.
• Rikki Pieters and Valerie Bares, sustainability experts of ESC Consulting, a few years ago achieved a precedent for one of their clients to park a Tiny House in a Brisbane backyard. They have since developed a Tiny House planning resource designed for councils, property developers or anyone planning to have a tiny home on their property.

• CERES is sustainability heaven in the heart of Melbourne. It was established in 1982, and has grown over many decades to include an online grocery, nursery and bookstore, urban farms, ethical wood merchant, and education centre. 

Tiny homes and  ecovillges have been the subject of scholarly research in Departments of Urban Planning in Griffith University Gold Coast and Universiy of Queensland.

• Dr Heather Shearer  is an outspoken advocate for tiny home living and has spoken at Tiny Home events in Queensland.
• Professor Paul Burton is Professor of Urban Management and Planning, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University he has written articles and conducted research with Dr Shearer.  He is often quoted in media articles on Tiny Houses inclluding The Conversation. See his contributions to tiny house media here.
  
• Dr Jason Hilder as part of his research and PhD on living in ecocommuities he has copublished articles on tiny home living. As part of the Urban Planning group from the University of Queensland he has compiled a blog with 2 articles on Tiny Home living. To view the blog go here.