tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58766361833432121752024-03-13T14:52:41.304+11:00No Impact GirlNo Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.comBlogger175125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-12182127551397186672023-12-28T10:46:00.008+11:002023-12-29T16:16:28.122+11:002023: Year of the memoirHappy endings and beginnings, friends. It feels strange to be writing here, having been so absent from this blog space, and from so many other places, this year. I barely even did any sustainable - or any other kind of - travel, or travel writing. Because I've been deep in book-writing mode, working on a memoir about the experience of building my tiny house, with all its inherent (and surprising)No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-37160835401502105332022-12-29T13:10:00.004+11:002023-01-02T09:25:46.905+11:002022: My year of living quietlyHere we are at the Sunday afternoon end of the year, at the tail end of this secret week between rushing and resolutions, between the year that's all but over and the one not yet begun. I like it. I like not knowing what day it is and feeling as if anything goes. No questions asked. There's time to read and nap and have regular swims to cool off (or is that just me?) and do nothing at all. And No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-57882758916679755532022-10-25T16:36:00.001+11:002022-10-26T11:47:50.740+11:00Tourism declares a climate emergency (and so do I)This blog post is a bit different to my usual sharings. It's about a subject close to my heart - climate action - and how it relates to travel, which can be a prickly subject for those of us who make our living from encouraging people to travel, at a time when we all really, truly need to cut our emissions in every aspect of our lives.I feel so strongly about this that today I'm signing Tourism No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-89977504192419483792021-12-29T13:15:00.003+11:002021-12-30T19:53:46.438+11:002021: My (big!) tiny yearWow, what a crazy, neverending, full-of-surprises year it's been. Did your trip around the sun this year seem to take longer than the usual 365 days? Mine did. Maybe because so many of our regular milestones seemed to vanish in a fog of ever-changing Covid restrictions, cancellations and lockdowns.Maybe 2021 seemed longer to me, too, because it was a big year, one that revolved around my new tinyNo Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-64145373685331863392021-11-09T10:26:00.002+11:002021-11-09T10:26:28.999+11:00Climate action inspiration + COP26 hope (I hope)I don't usually weigh in on world affairs here. I think about them, of course, as most of us do. Talk with friends. Take action where I can, particularly locally, and try to live low-impact ("no impact" is unattainable, of course; the name of my blog was always intended to be aspirational and playful, by the way, not prescriptive). But this feels different. The climate crisis makes it No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-47971648705426636632021-10-27T18:29:00.002+11:002021-10-28T09:10:02.936+11:009 things I learned from building a tiny houseAs promised, a brief recap on what's been happening since my last real blog post, back in November 2020 when I was two months into building my tiny house. I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow description of the build - the highs, the lows, the new words I learned! (For that, and LOTS of pics, head to my No Impact Girl page on Facebook.) Instead, I thought I'd try to distill the pastNo Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-67877937967309483442021-10-18T16:44:00.012+11:002021-10-20T11:09:19.688+11:00Talking tiny, candidlyIf you've been following my No Impact Girl facebook page - where I've been posting almost-weekly updates of my tiny house build - you'll know that the tiny house is finished! Officially, I moved into the tiny in March and we (Mr No Impact Girl and I) finished all the essential bits in May this year. Unofficially, I finished making the last big thing - a pine storage unit for my bed loftNo Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-6193932330969072422021-08-09T09:58:00.002+10:002021-08-09T09:58:58.618+10:00A small tiny house helloA year ago this month, in August 2020, I took delivery of a 7.2-metre galvanised steel trailer - the foundations for my tiny-house-to-be. It's been a momentous year (and a half) for all of us, all over the world, in so many ways. In my corner of it, building my tiny home was one of the biggest adventures of my life. It took everything I had, body, mind, heart and soul. I think that's why it's No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-8009979568315680252020-11-12T19:16:00.007+11:002020-11-15T19:24:40.450+11:00My life is a tiny house (and I love that)This is real. Every day I say this to myself and I still can't really believe it: I'm building a tiny house. But here I am halfway through Week 8 of the build (see my previous post on how it started) and my hand-drawn plans - in pencil, on graph paper - have become a little house I can walk around in (if not actually move into, yet). My tiny life, so farWhen I say "I", I mean "we" - I'm No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-86398645105087858352020-08-10T18:33:00.003+10:002020-08-11T11:53:12.585+10:00A new adventure: My tiny house project beginsLet me start this with a wish - that you and those around you are safe and well, in all ways, in these "interesting" times. The small town where I live by the sea in New South Wales has been spared the worst of it (so far) and I'm grateful for that. My travel wings have been clipped of course, but I'm surviving by the grace of the Australian government's wage subsidy and since lockdown my life No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-39581701209249456032020-04-28T12:46:00.000+10:002020-04-28T13:31:22.226+10:00A postcard from home, with love and wonder"For most of our time on this planet, people usually spent their lives within a few hundred miles of where they were born, doing much the same thing each day with the same people in their band or village, embedded in a culture that changed little from century to century," says psychologist and author Dr Rick Hanson* in a weekly e-missive that landed in my inbox recently.
"These external No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-3918745279434888072020-04-15T09:59:00.000+10:002020-04-23T14:58:01.970+10:00Can we justify travel in the era of climate change?While I gather my thoughts on this crazy coronavirus time we're all living through, I thought I'd share an episode of the Thoughtful Travel podcast created by my Perth-based travel media friend, the lovely and talented Amanda Kendle, aka Not a Ballerina.
Patagonia sunrise, 2017
Like a lot of us, Amanda has been riding the see-saw of climate change vs travel for a while, wondering if it's No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-76633226462757121072020-02-20T10:34:00.001+11:002020-08-25T08:11:26.518+10:00After the bushfires: open for business, not business as usualThis week, for the first time this Australian summer, actually for the first time since September, the news is good: all bushfires burning in NSW have been contained, thanks to more than a week of drenching rain.
Blue Mtns on fire. Pic: City of Sydney
I've been wanting to write something about Australia's bushfire crisis for a while. And not wanting to.
So much has been written already,No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-83599820480634640382019-12-31T14:34:00.000+11:002020-01-22T06:53:00.517+11:002019: The year of sustainable thinkingHere we are again, at the end of another 365-day trip around the sun together, another year-long stay on the rooftop of our planetary hotel. It's an artificial, human-centric end, of course, but the eve of a "new" year is as good a time as any to stop, sit under a tree and check our internal compasses again.
A new dawn, in Turkey
Are we still on track? How far back was the last trail-marker? No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-69834532479094666742019-11-07T14:00:00.000+11:002019-11-07T22:12:24.081+11:00Barefoot writing: "A month of simple Sundays", my new bookI'm excited to announce the quiet launch of a little project I've been working on: a new book, in fact, unlike any other I've written. It isn't about travel. It's not a guide. It's still non-fiction, sort of.
A month of simple Sundays is an accidental collection of 30 prose pieces (and a few poems) written on idle Sunday afternoons with a pen on paper outdoors, mostly while looking at the sea,No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-6178949805038351182019-10-22T14:46:00.000+11:002019-10-22T14:46:40.557+11:00Travel Writer of the Year - again!For the past three days I've been jumping up and down inside like Olive in Little Miss Sunshine, because on Saturday night I won the Australian Society of Travel Writers' most prestigious award: Travel Writer of the Year.
Aloft in Turkey - instead
of attending awards night
It's a big honour and feels so good to be recognised by my peers. Freelance travel writing can be a No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-69376952305771804902019-10-09T15:22:00.001+11:002019-10-09T15:29:33.309+11:00Tiny house review: Unyoked's Micah "hideout"Tiny houses are the future. There, I said it. And not just for living in. Ever since tiny houses started colonising travel a few years ago, tiny low-impact weekenders have been sprouting up everywhere - and by "everywhere" I mean places so off-grid all your phone is good for is as a paperweight while trying to read a book outdoors.
Bed by Unyoked (and pic)
This post is about one of the "tiny No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-84123438613003350872019-10-01T19:44:00.001+10:002019-10-02T06:26:51.301+10:002040: The most inspiring book you will read this year (or ever)This time last week, before the delegates at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York sat down to talk about solutions to the climate crisis, before they even heard Greta Thunberg's powerful "How dare you" speech, they watched a few clips from an Australian movie.
Seen the doco?
Now read the book
2040, a documentary released earlier this year and directed by Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau,No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-90794745868465369802019-09-09T12:55:00.001+10:002019-09-09T13:00:59.395+10:00What Bob Brown said (at the TravelDAZE sustainable travel event)
One of the highlights of attending Travel Weekly's TravelDAZE sustainable travel event a couple of weeks ago was seeing Bob Brown, former Greens senator and long-time environmental campaigner, in person, and listening to his inspiring keynote speech. In his trademark regional Australian drawl he didn't pull any punches about the predicament we earthlings are facing right now, but he No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-83245018599221893952019-09-03T15:28:00.001+10:002019-09-03T18:38:54.003+10:00Bob Brown, low-carbon travel & more from TravelDAZE 2019Last week I did something that wasn't very no-impact: I flew to Sydney for the day. After weighing up the pros and (carbon) cons, I decided it was worth it. And it totally was, because it was one incredible, inspiring day.
Called TravelDAZE, this annual TEDx-style event is run by Travel Weekly and this year the theme was Sustainable Travel. So of course I had to go.
Oh, and one of the 21No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-66107750762881224942019-06-27T09:46:00.001+10:002019-06-27T13:23:52.217+10:00Six sustainable reasons to visit ItalyThis time last week I was just back from Italy, which was surprisingly inspiring from a sustainability perspective - and not just because I was travelling with a bunch of vegans.
Vegan gelato, mmm
We were on a brand new Italy Vegan Food Adventure run by Intrepid Travel, which is timely given that 2019 has been called The Year of the Vegan (by The Economist). But a vegan No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-26145147744250638822019-06-05T12:35:00.001+10:002019-06-06T23:49:33.573+10:00Fred's Tiny House review: cosy DIY inspiration in VictoriaBefore I launch into my review of tiny house #3 in this four-part series, here's a link to my tiny house cover story published in last week's Traveller. It's about how the global tiny house movement is colonising travel, one "tiny house stay" at a time, and includes mini-reviews of the four tiny houses I'm reviewing more fully here.
Fred & Shannon's tiny house
The third tiny I No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-52219709958057910072019-05-23T11:00:00.000+10:002020-05-12T10:17:41.724+10:00Man on a mission: Grant Emans, tiny house builder<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-14430667086274653102019-05-17T20:43:00.000+10:002019-05-20T17:45:07.686+10:00Tiny house review: Tallarook on the NSW south coastI once had a boyfriend who loved to declare, whenever we found ourselves in a small space - a hotel room, a shipping container, even an elevator - "I could live here". It was a declaration of his independence from traditional houses, decades before tiny houses became a thing, but his words have been coming back to me lately.
Tiny house in the mist
Pic: Tom Wilson Media
Most notably on a No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5876636183343212175.post-8189628405975665202019-05-03T12:49:00.004+10:002019-05-14T13:39:33.414+10:00Tiny house review: "Edmond" in the NSW Southern HighlandsSome daydreams do come true. I've been a bit obsessed with tiny houses for a while now - reading books like Cabin Porn, watching docos like Small is Beautiful and Minimalism and Living Big in a Tiny House's reviews, even doing a weekend tiny-building workshop with Fred's Tiny Houses (reviewed here).
A shepherd's hut in the UK
Pic: cabinporn.com
But it wasn't until a few No Impact Girlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17424952097974215783noreply@blogger.com0