October 1, 2026
Jodie Cameron from Hello Sunshine Magazine recently joined us at one of our completed homes in Eumundi. Sitting down with Brett and homeowners Carmel and Phil, Jodie explored their experience of working with Ecolibrium and how their vision for a sustainable home was brought to life through the design process.
Read the full interview below.
What do you get when you combine a home built with hemp, history and 100-year-old staying power? Jodie Cameron unearths a home that doesn’t want you to leave.
I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it again: I love my job – especially on days like this one. Walking through a Eumundi property designed by Ecolibrium and owned by Phil and Carmel, I couldn’t help smiling with my mouth open. If these walls could talk, I think I know what they’d say: “Thank you, I love living here.”
Ecolibrium isn’t just designing some of the coast’s most sustainable and earth-friendly homes, it’s building homes that know how to breathe on their own. Every surface invites a hand to reach out – a rustic honesty in the flaws of reclaimed timber, a real earthiness you can smell. It’s the kind of home that makes you want to buy land so you can build one just like it.
Something that feels like it’s holding you up rather than simply sheltering you, no fresh paint or carpet smells, just the quiet promise that in a hundred years it’ll still be standing, hopefully holding someone else up in the way it’s holding its owners now.
That’s exactly the feeling Ecolibrium owner and Principal Building Designer Brett Grimley has spent 20 years chasing from his Eumundi-based studio, and it’s a philosophy he brought fully to life in his third complete hempcrete build.
“It’s always the aim – I want my clients to say it’s good to be home,” he said. “When you come into the garden entry, your stress levels drop straight away. Life gets better right there, let alone coming into the rest of the house.”
The material doing the heavy lifting is hempcrete: a mix of hemp, lime, water and sand, hand-packed into a timber frame rather than sheeted like plasterboard. Brett said its many benefits ran deep.
“It’s carbon negative, it helps control humidity, and because there’s so much lime in it, it’s very alkaline which makes it highly resistant to mould,” Brett says.
Hempcrete also changes how a room sounds, with none of the flat echo that bounces off hard surfaces; and it keeps curing after the build finishes, gradually becoming harder and more stone-like over time. Much of the home’s timber has an equally good story. Homeowner Phil sourced a large load of reclaimed hardwood from the old Maryborough flour mill after a tip off from a friend.
“We got a lot from the mill when they pulled it down,” Phil says. “Just happened to be at the right time.”
That timber now forms the home’s benches, internal doors and feature walls, alongside secondhand doors, locally sourced hoop pine, and low-tox renders and paint. I’ll admit – I’ve never liked anything glossy, or white lights, and Carmel feels exactly the same. Apparently, that’s biophilic design.
“It’s all about bringing nature’s textures and colours inside while keeping harmful chemicals out,” Brett says.
There’s a family thread stitched through the build: several of the internal doors were made and fitted by the couple’s son, Aidan, who lives on the Gold Coast but had his hands in much of the construction alongside his Dad. Before construction began, Brett ran the owners through a thorough briefing process that informed the entire design– less checklist, more conversation about how they wanted to live. Phil and Carmel never wanted a big house to begin with.
The result is a house that sits on a steep, sloping 1700 square-metre block, with two distinct living spaces – the main house and a separate BnB pavilion – connected by a garden entry walkway. Both face north to capture winter sun while blocking summer heat, with roof louvres and southern cross-flow doors doing what air conditioning usually does.
A Hoop Pine tree, believed to be about 50 years old, was kept and built around rather than cleared, and edible gardens planted before the build, now flourish. In a neat reversal, what the family calls their back door actually sits at the front of the house – a deliberate design choice tied to orientation rather than the street. It catches the cooler breeze from the home’s southern side, pulling air straight through when opened.
“I don’t worry about where the street is,” Brett says. “It’s all about orientation.”
Tucked into the design is a separate ensuite retreat with its own entry, now run as a popular BnB that sits in the top one per cent of highest-ranked homes, with stressed-out city guests rarely leaving the property once they arrive.
“We’ve had 200 reviews and never had a bad comment,” Phil said. “They just relax, they don’t go out.”
Brett believes sustainable design never needs to be a compromise.
“Going smaller gives you more room in the budget to go up in quality,” Brett said. “This should be here for 100-plus years.”
You can feel the difference in a home that’s happy. There’s a warmth to reclaimed timber that new materials can’t imitate, and a stillness that no display home could ever manufacture. I know where I’m headed next time I get a weekend to myself. This was never meant to be an architectural showpiece. It’s a home.
Book with Brett
Book an obligation-free, two-hour consultation with Brett from Ecolibrium
• Ideally on-site – get a feel for your land
• Talk through your vision and budget
• Small fee for Brett to travel to you
• Video call option for sites further afield
Visit www.ecolibrium.com.au find out more and to book an initial consultation.
Read the original article here.
Hero Image by Alain Bouvier
