Toilet Tours / Responsible Recycling

Toilet Tours:

Responsible Recycling

In a style reminiscent of the Ettamogah Pub, this wooden building offers a much-needed convenience at the Johanna campsite. Much needed, especially if I had cooked and eaten my own camp food. (Not that I made that mistake ! The focus of our travels is on public toilets but the source of our meals is the best restaurants available. Or home cooking which is, of course, even better.)

The Johanna campsite toilet -- see the picture below -- has many unique and environmentally responsible features:

• Note, for example, the roof: Open spaces allow for natural air conditioning. Naturally occurring rainwater will, in the rainy season, wash even the "sheltered" wall. From our experience, this would result in walls being washed several times each week.
• The verandah offers both shelter and a view. The actual shelter value is reduced by the holes in the roof. The view, however, benefits from the way in which the entire building is raised above the ground. With the door open, this magnificent view is also available to people inside.
• The access ramp is well suited to wheelchair users. Whether or not a wheelchair user could navigate to the campsite -- along unsealed dirt tracks -- is a moot point. If they arrived, they would be able to access this toilet.
• For those in a hurry, on crowded days, there are also trees, placed conveniently nearby.

Further along the coastal Great Ocean Walk is Ryan's Den. This campsite also offers a raised wooden toilet with verandah and access ramp. The design is so similar to that at Johanna campsite that one suspects a copyright violation, or at least a design collusion.

The photograph below shows another startling design feature of these remarkable toilets:

As noted earlier, the publicly accessible portion of these buildings is raised, in order to allow customers full access to the coastal views. The space underneath is not wasted: it is devoted to storage and recycling of the waste products. This is, indeed, a clever use of otherwise waste space (if you will excuse the pun). After storage, settling and self-composting, waste material is available for Responsible Recycling.

Nor is the recycling dependent on the passing of sufficient time ! Note the water tank on the downhill slope. Liquid waste may be piped directly into this external tank, where it is available for further recycling by responsible campers and hikers.

These structures offer excellent examples of architectural design incorporating sustainable and responsible recycling: waste to water and fertiliser to gardens.

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These reviews are provided by Agamedes Consulting. For an independent and thoughtful review of your processes, problems or documents, email nickleth at gmail dot com.