Sitting in an outdoor enclosure stroking the soft coat of a Nigerian dwarf goat brings a sense of calm to Katie Jay.
She and her partner Mike Walton have chosen to live a more sustainable lifestyle and the goats are the newest addition to their property.
"They are an amazing dairy goat with a fantastic temperament," Ms Jay said.
"They're really friendly and they love cuddles.
"They're kind of like vegetarian dogs."
Katie, Mike and their family are like many others choosing to live a greener, more simplistic life.
Motivating factors may include wanting to live off-grid and debt-free, or wanting to reduce one's environmental impact and grow vegetables at home.
Katie and Mike live on a just under a hectare in Cairns, Far North Queensland, with an array of well-established fruit trees, a rotating vegetable garden, chickens and goats.
"It's an amazing feeling coming home from work and instead of going to the shops, grabbing a basket and secateurs and doing your own grocery run in your garden," Katie said.
"We only grow foods we actually eat every day and we have a back-up plan for all the excess produce we grow.
"We pickle and preserve, make jams and chutneys, trade with friends, and everything that's left goes to our animals and our compost."
The addition of the goats means they can use the animals' high protein, high butter fat milk to make their own cheese and yoghurt.
Four-legged 'escape artists'
But bringing the goats home came with challenges as one of the males, Jagermeister, kept jumping the fence.
"It's true what they say about goats, they're escape artists," Mike says.
"Originally we thought a 1.3-metre fence would be high enough, but it cleared that fence and after a couple more attempts we finished with a two metre-high fence.
"Touch wood, he hasn't escaped since."
The goats get plenty of attention though, as the whole family loves sitting in the enclosure and spending time with them.
"They're so affectionate and love a scratch and I feel bad walking away if I haven't given them all a scratch," Katie says.
Debt free but not pest free
When Renea James, her husband and sons sold their property in Cairns and bought a rural property with just a shed on it in the Atherton Tablelands, they became mortgage-free.
Their dream was for a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly lifestyle with fewer bills and plenty of space to grow their own food, but they did not count on the wildlife eating most of their produce.
"We've had nothing but the lovely wildlife helping themselves and leaving us with literally nothing," Renea says.
She has since installed a wire fence around the vegetable patch to keep out the wallabies but that has not stopped them devouring her fig leaves and the black rice she was growing.
"Then a possum ate over 100 of our peaches off the one tree. It kept coming back over a couple of nights and left nothing but the seeds on the tree and then all our mulberries got eaten too," Renea said.
She is not deterred, and says it has been a great learning curve.
The family even invested in an unusual breed of chickens, known as lavender Sussex, which freely roam the property.
"They're just so pretty but we bought them because they're a bigger bird and are a meat bird as well as an egg bird," Renea says.
While they are not completely off-grid and remain connected to town power and water, they have chosen a compost toilet over connecting to the town's sewerage system.
"My decision was environmental as I didn't want to waste water but instead repurpose it, so the fact this property already had a compost toilet was a huge selling point for me," Renea said.
"The rest of the family wasn't so keen on the idea and wanted a regular toilet but nobody has complained since we moved here."
The drop toilet has no flushing capacity but uses pine shavings and buckets of leaves to help break down the compost, with a whirly bird attached to the outhouse to help aerate and eliminate odours.
Renea says the biggest challenge has probably been living in the shed while building and fitting out its interior as there is nowhere to store their furniture, but it is part of the adventure.
"Everything else has been amazing and the space here brings me so much peace," she says.
Off-grid and open to the wildlife
Leah Kelly fell in love with a plot in the middle of the rainforest in Kuranda 20 years ago and has been living there off-grid ever since.
She said her favourite childhood memories were camping with her family so her home was almost a replica of that.
"It's like I'm living on a permanent campsite, basically, with all my furniture," Leah said.
The long driveway to the property is rough, off-road and 4WD-only, so getting building materials to the property has been difficult over the years.
It is not your standard home with walls on all sides, and has been built with home-milled timber, recycled materials and garage sale finds.
"The house looks like it is still under construction, but I did recently add large wooden front doors and windows," Leah said.
Being open plan means Leah sometimes encounters snakes inside her home, especially pythons and night tigers.
"I generally find them around the rafters, on top of my wardrobe or sometimes in my drawers curled up," she says.
"The nasty ones like taipans generally don't come into the house although I do sometimes see them outside."
Leah says she does not mind the wildlife, even the bush turkeys, wallabies, pademelons, goannas and chickens who eat the vegetables she grows, she just asks that they leave her half.
Her garden is thriving with every kind of vegetable, herb or fruit tree imaginable, as it needs to sustain her through the wet season when supplies sometimes run out because of flooded creeks.
Leah makes her own cordials, wines, jams, chutneys and even dehydrated fruits.
She has always lived sustainably and relies on rainwater, has solar panels and a generator to top up the batteries in the wet season, and has recently built a bathroom and installed an eco-toilet.
But living off-grid means living minimally, so there is no toaster, electric kettle, microwave, air fryer, television or air conditioner, and certainly no wifi.
But Leah, a successful fashion designer who works from home, would not live any other way.
"I love the lack of power bills and not hearing neighbours argue or flush their toilet," she says.
"And being surrounded by nature is grounding for me as an artist."
