UNLESS it's in an old fable, it's not every day that you hear of a house made entirely out of straw.
But that's what Sarah and Geoff Mason built on their Calingiri based property, 120 kilometres north of Perth.
With a passion for sustainability, the couple attended a straw bale workshop in South Australia and also hosted one themselves, with about 30 people coming and staying on their property.
"The house wasn't completed, we only had the frame up and the bathrooms working, so everyone camped on the property," Ms Mason said.
"It was great because it got the straw into the walls, otherwise it would have taken a very long time with just Geoff and I, particularly given the ceilings are quite tall at 3.6 metres.
"I borrowed a friend's baler and baled the straw from another mates farm, which is barley because it's a bit nicer to handle."
Inside the walls of the house are treated pine frames, with the straw sitting in a brick-like formation to create insulation.
Wire either side holds the straw in place, giving it stability in a vertical plane.
This is just one of many sustainable features of the beautiful home, which is made mostly from recycled materials.
Taking three years to build, the home's trusses, rafters and floorboards all came from the Bindi Bindi Hall, which was demolished due to maintenance issues, while large posts featured inside the living areas are from the North Fremantle Wharf.
With shares in a portable saw mill, Ms Mason sourced most of the home's timber in 2009 and waited until 2011 to mill it, so it was able to dry out.
Besides a few sections of floorboards, the floors are made out of concrete which has recycled glass in it.
"Concrete works really well at keeping the house cool in summer and warm in winter, so despite it not being very sustainable due to the large amount of carbon and energy used to make it, we still chose to use it," Ms Mason said.
Orientated east-west, the home was designed to be solar passive.
"By putting large windows on the northern side, we get the winter sun coming in, but don't get the main axis of the house being heated up in the morning and the afternoon in summer - that's why there are much smaller windows on the western side," she said.
With no air conditioning, an earth tube was installed to keep air moving, travelling underneath the house at 1.8 metres and coming out at the cellar.
"At 1.8m the ground stays the same temperature all year round, so the cellar is really cool at 18-19 degrees, and the idea is that any hot air in the cellar rises up through the doorway," Ms Mason said.
"We also have extractor fans at the top of the apex which help circulate the air."
Keeping in line with the sustainability theme, the house has solar panels with batteries. Completely off the grid, the Masons receive no power or water bills, with only a back-up generator in case of emergency, and a 250,000 litre tank used to collect rainwater from the roof.
In the gardens are a range of native plants including hakeas, dryandras and banksias, all planted to provide food for the birds in the area, which include a breeding population of Carnaby cockatoos.
But that's not where the couple's passion for nature ends - with Ms Mason estimating they have planted more than 170,000 trees since she moved to Australia in 1988.
"I usually plant them within the creek lines or saline affected areas, and most people think I'm crazy for planting trees on good agricultural land, so they call me a greenie or a tree hugger," she said.
"But our aim is just to leave land in a better condition."
Hailing from England, Ms Mason felt right at home as soon as she arrived in Australia's outback, working on a sheep station north of Broken Hill, New South Wales.
"I quickly fell in love with the place and I thought to myself, oh my god, I was born in the wrong country," Ms Mason said.
"I spent lots of time trying to get back to Australia, attending Murdoch to study as an overseas student, but it was only after I met Geoff and we married that I finally got Australian residency."
With her husband's occupation as a pilot, Ms Mason said the irony of them striving for a "green" existence was not lost on her.
"Lots of people tease us because I'm always planting trees, I try to be carbon neutral and I've been using non plastic bags for 25 years etc but then they say, well, Geoff's a pilot, so he uses a fair bit of carbon and puts loads of crap in the atmosphere," she said.
"My response is - that's why we plant so many trees, to try and counter-balance it."
Ms Mason's passion for planting trees led to running wildflower walks during wildflower season. "
"I used to host wildflower walks here with the Calingiri Progress Association and the Victoria Plains Tourism Association and then decided to go out on my own," she said.
Walking in an area of bushland just off Calingiri Road that is easily accessible, the walks go for about an hour, with the group stopping for a billy tea in the bush or afternoon tea at the Mason's homestead.
Only hosting groups of eight or larger, Ms Mason said she invariably learnt from the people who attended as well, with their knowledge of wildflowers often surpassing her own.
She said her passion for sustainability and land care management stems from her mum.
"Mum used to milk dairy cows on a farm in England, but when her and my step dad split, she had to sell the farm," she said.
"She always wanted more land, so when I got residency in Australia she said we could buy a farm and she would come live here.
"Her criteria for the property was that it had to be leasable, within two hours of Perth and have some natural bushland on it."
In 2001 the Masons found a property which matched her wishes, buying 1000 hectares at Calingiri.
"Only 600ha of the land is arable due to lots of cap rock, which meant large blocks of remnant vegetation being left" Ms Mason said.
Initially leasing all of the property out, the Masons decided to try their own hand at share-farming with some friends.
"It didn't end up working out because it was the worst three years of hay," Ms Mason said.
Following that, she said they had another go with her father-in-law Dave Mason, describing it as low-impact farming.
"We didn't use any artificial fertilisers - instead opting for a mixture of rock dust, coal dust, seaweed and molasses," she said.
"No pesticide was used, but the thing with regenerative farming is that it needs a few years to start working, so I think it was only in the following years, after Geoff and I stopped farming, that the new tenant saw the benefits in the crops."
The current lessee crop scanola, wheat and barley and also runs sheep.
"My mum doesn't like GM so it's part of our agreement that they don't grow GM canola on the property," Ms Mason said.
In the future they hope to return to farming but will probably wait until Mr Mason goes part-time or retires from the aviation industry.
"We keep going to all of the regenerative ag conferences, holistic management courses and field days to increase our knowledge," Ms Mason said.
"Once I started on a path of sustainability, I just became more and more invested, because you keep learning more, so it's an ongoing process.
"If we try our hand at farming again we will do the regenerative farming with livestock."
