The sun rises over the sandstone ridge line that delineates Glenworth Valley near Peates Ridge. Mist starts burning off and the tent littered valley floor reveals below. The festival is in its second day now and there are around12,000 people packed onto flat and sometimes soggy ground by a small tidal creek that dissects the site. I’ve walked a hundred meters or so up toward the northern ridge to dig my loo hole and find my view. About halfway through proceedings, I hear a sound behind me. Shit! I think I’ve been busted by some acid tripping sunrise seeking hippie kid.

Apparently there is some confusion as to whether I am actually sitting on my loo, lap top on bared thighs, tapping out these prose on poo, or am I comfortably in front of my PC with an empty bowel and squeeze free scowl. Good. I’m glad, it is always best left to the imagination don’t you think? All I can say is these wooden seats beat the plastic ones hands down in this sweltering heat. When did we start sitting on sweaty plastic anyway? My first memories of going to the loo always involved running my fingernails along the aged timber bench seat that spanned the width of the outhouse.

From where I’m sitting I can see the changes that have taken place here over the last 14 years. I bought my block at Barkers Vale as a clean slate, a stipulation from my financiers that has resulted in years of hard work and the satisfaction of transforming a degraded cow paddock into a model of sustainable farming and lifestyle. The throne I now sit upon was the first structure, a veritable icon that stuck out like the proverbial dogs balls when it arose from the red earth. I called it Mums throne, because it was she who threatened never to visit if all I had was hole in the ground.

The wind is howling, tree tops brushing the sky like great brooms sweeping the air clean. When I was young someone told me the trees pushed the air around. Much later, I took a lot of convincing otherwise. I can feel the air swirling inside the compost toilet chamber too, the whirly on the flu is doing a zillion miles an hour. The little aerobic microbes down there will be making the most of it, no doubt they do aerobics while they munch their way through their favourite fare.

My head is sore and stuffy, there must be pollen in the air. The chooks are following a mysteriously ordered ritual that takes them past my throne of a morn. The rooster is…well ….somewhere below me…Nonetheless, the chooks have reordered themselves and now a proud black lady wears her crest and leads the way. Nature abhors a vacuum.

As I sit and contemplate the sacred lady mountain from my wooden throne, the cold, distant goddess that fills my vista, I am reminded of the Winter that is almost upon us. My list of chores fills up with anticipation of clear skies and (finally, please…) a bit of drier weather. As the plants and animals slow down, we humans play catch up, tidying up around the edges of our wet wilderness to provide us with a semblance of sanity for the darker months to come.

We're proud to announce the completion of the first pre-cast concrete composting toilet designed and built by Pooh Solutions. The two piece concrete unit below is a variation on the site cast units pictured in the gallery. It has smaller wall cross sections (75mm) and a different sealable door arrangement. It also has a lot more steel re-inforcement and tilt lift lifting points allowing us to lift the sections onto a crane truck. There is a connely joint between the sections, allowing the two pieces to re-align perfectly at the destination site.

The first pre-cast concrete clivus is about to be poured. After much deliberation, re-engineering and general procrastination, Pooh Solutions is proud to announce what we hope will become the benchmark for compost toilet design and construction in Australia. The Clivus Maximus uses the age old tried and tested Swedish sloping floor design of the popular cement block toilets in a pre-cast concrete option. The vestibule comes in two separate pieces, with the top half being of variable height to allow us to tailor design the units to suit individual site specific requirements.

We tried using biochar in the micromus to see if would make a suitable bulking agent. Obviously char contains plenty of carbon, an essential for any good bulking agent. HOWEVER, it is also very absorbent, and soaks up pee like a sponge. This created a perfect environment for the larvae of the drain fly, which soon took on plague proportions in the vestibule.

The re-designed levelling device in the micromus has now been installed and appears to be working well. It consists of a heavy re-bar with raking forks welded onto the end that sits in the compost chamber. It's fulcrum is where it passes through the wall of the chamber so it extends outwards, where it is easily manipulated from. It had to be heavy enough to rake the dense top part of the pile. The Micromus is still odour free, even after three lots of tenants!!