Living off-grid, content and alone for over 30 years.

Jill Redwood, an inspirational woman living on her own, off-grid, an hour from the nearest shop…

 

 
 

 


This wonderful woman is Jill Redwood. Jill built her house in East Gippsland, Australia where she has lived alone for over 30 years entirely off-grid with no mains power, water, mobile reception or television. Living on around $80 a week, Jill has over sixty animals to keep her company and an abundant garden that serves as an organic supermarket right outside her doorstep. Generating all her own solar power and collecting water from the local creek (see video right), Jill lives a totally self-sufficient life.

 
   
 
           

The house and neighbouring sheds are a museum of 19th and 20th century bits and pieces where a lifetime of salvaged things are kept just in case they are needed some day. Nothing goes to waste, everything is either composted or recycled somehow. Living on a home grown organic diet, free of all refined foods, Jill has clear skin, bright eyes and the fitness of a woman much younger; she never gets sick.

Jill goes shopping in her town, an hour and a half's journey, only when she has to. She can manage without visiting the shops for around six months. She has a larder filled with pickles and preserves, makes her own apple juice and has 19th century solutions to almost all maintenance problems. She is a walking encyclopaedia on survival, natural living skills, plants and animals. Her only 21st century luxury is the internet which she uses as a freelance writer and her work for Environment East Gippsland, a community forest group protecting Victoria's last ancient forest.