How Graham and Bridgit built an idyllic oasis from an unusual material

Graham Creed and Bridgit English have created an oasis at their farm – and they used an unusual building material to do so.

The former ABC weatherman and his partner built the off-grid, two-bedroom house with hemp in 2019, on their 44-hectare paradise known as Eagles Reach in regional NSW, years before movie star Zac Efron started to do the same.

The hemp walls of their home in Nooroo, north of Newcastle, provide thermal regulation and fire resistance. Along with double glazing, ventilation and tiled floors, the house is comfortable throughout the seasons.

Conditions are perfect to kick back and enjoy the vast views, which English says gives it a “magical” sense of retreat.

“From bed and at the right time of the season, we can see the Milky Way,” she says.

They have now listed the idyllic property at 299 Nevilles Road for sale through The Agency Gloucester’s Amanda Robertson.

The couple are years ahead of Efron, who put hemp in the spotlight by building a Tweed Valley eco-home using hemp and straw components with environmentalist and designer Joost Bakker.

Efron happily posed with the hemp boards that will form his future kitchen when he visited a factory on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula this year.

Efron is lending his star power to hemp, and although it has boosted the plant’s profile in residential design, experts say more public awareness, builder training and manufacturing advancements will help it to move from niche to mainstream.

Creed, a meteorologist and the former ABC News national weather presenter, says heat was front of mind when he and English decided what type of house to build.

“We were living in a shed house, and it was off grid, so we knew the off-grid component,” Creed says. “But heat in that shed was a real problem, so we always knew that we needed to build something that was more resilient to heat.”

They regenerated the former cattle farm into a bush haven for wildlife, and Creed grows waratahs and proteas in colourful paddocks. Their conservation ethos naturally included the building materials they selected.

Their builder, Shane Hannan, offered the choice of hemp or hebel, a lightweight concrete. “We had a look at some of the hemp homes that he built, and thought, ‘Yep, hemp’s the way to go’,” Creed says. “Just the look and the feel of it was just so totally different to anything else.”

Far from Hollywood, in Sydney’s suburbs, sustainable home builders such as Nick Sowden have been singing hemp’s praises for years.

Hemp is the plant and hempcrete is the product that combines the woody inner stem with a binder and water. Sowden built one of Sydney’s first hempcrete homes in 2015. His interest in the environmental effects of building materials started when he read the book Slow Death by Rubber Duck, about everyday toxins.

A presentation by Australian Hemp Masonry convinced him to complete the training. “I said, ‘Wait, this is actually ticking all the boxes’ – it’s got insulation, it’s got thermal mass, it controls the humidity, it locks away a hell of a lot of carbon. It grows quickly. You get stable temperature year round, and acoustically it’s fantastic as well,” he says.

Sowden Building Solutions has completed seven hempcrete houses, mainly in Sydney’s inner west.

Sowden says clients can feel the difference. “In one instance, I was at an Ashes Test, and it’s 40-something degrees and 56 degrees on the pitch apparently, and I’m getting text messages from my clients with no air-conditioning in the house at that point in time, saying, ‘It’s 24 degrees in here, and it’s been hot for days in a row’,” he says.

Sowden has educated other builders in the material and says more public awareness, industry training and the development of Australian standards, will encourage wider use.

Researchers are investigating how more Australians could benefit from hemp in their homes.

Associate Professor Ailar Hajimohammadi from UNSW Sydney’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering says the porous structure provides insulation that reduces the need for heating and cooling. “It can regulate the moisture in the environment as well, which is quite interesting, and not many building components have that capacity,” she says.

Hajimohammadi says hempcrete is generally more expensive to build with, but stresses that comparing it directly to the price of conventional materials doesn’t factor in its advantages. More local suppliers and production could help to bring down the cost, she says.

She has researched the development of prefabricated hempcrete components, which would make the building process simple and accessible, for easier and faster construction.

Australia’s hemp industry is growing but has further to go. “It’s relatively small, so of course we need more local processing and manufacturing to give better access, and visibility at least, to what is available.”