Corey Harris, civil engineer and architect, came to the ‘prepper’ perspective in his late-twenties. After years of research, he bought a secluded parcel of land, set deep within the tall eucalypts in the Blue Mountains. It took Corey eight years to build a four-bedroom house, which, to the casual observer, appears to be a comfortable home – nothing more than a weekend getaway for a weary city-worker.
In truth, Corey created a façade that encapsulates a self-sustaining bunker; designed inside and out to withstand a wide variety of social and environmental disasters.
We meet at a pub and I notice a nervousness bordering on apprehension. He quickly leaves and I am forced to hurry so I can follow him out of town. Corey’s secluded ‘home’ is set deep within dense eucalypts and is almost an hour of off-road driving from where we met. His advice to use a 4×4 is well-founded as recognisable roadway disappears not long into the journey.
As a condition of cooperating with me, Corey has stipulated that I cannot divulge the location of his shelter or the town in which we met.
Arrival is met by a high chain-link fence, reinforced with concrete posts at key points along the perimeter. These fortifications are mostly hidden beneath thick vines and other dense foliage, effectively masking much of the supporting structure from outside view. A remotely operated gate creates a space just wide enough for our vehicles to pass through. It then retracts and shuts us off from the outside world.
Stepping out of our vehicles, I am assaulted by the smells of flowering fruit, wet moss and eucalypts. Birds call to each other in the mid-year chill and a strong breeze disturbs the greenery. Corey begins a tour of his “home away from hell”, as he calls it, and I note a change in his demeanour. He is home now, and safe within the high walls and certainty of a place created by his own hands to withstand the potential fall of the outside world.
Within the perimeter fence are a wide selection of fruit trees and shrubs, at various stages of bearing fruit. Corey spends time describing how everything has been positioned with the express purpose of maximising the growth potential of each particular fruit. Apples and peaches are given enough space away from the house and fence (and each other) so they don’t cannibalise sun and water. Grape vines are growing well across fencing installed in precise lines. Strawberry and blueberry shrubs appear to be thriving with individual netting shrouds protecting them from birds and insects.
As we wander through the outside space, a heady, intoxicating scent of fruit swirls around us as and mixes in with the sharper smells of a variety of fertilisers – some bought and some created on-site. Entwined amongst the greenery are hydroponics lines and myriad tools for cultivating and harvesting the fruit, all of which forces us through demarcated lanes between tree, shrub and vine.
We move inside the three story home, where two of these levels are situated underground. Corey has implemented a design purely for function. There is not an ornament or colour introduced anywhere for aesthetic purposes. Wall and floor construction include conduits behind easily removable metal panels for direct access to pipes and cabling. Beside these are sheets of unpainted MDF, which creates a strange effect of thick, alternating strips of silver and dirty white. While brick on the outside, the inner walls feature wooden framework interspersed with vertical steel beams. The remaining space within the walls are stuffed with insulation.
Most rooms in the top level follow this austere, extreme function design, including a small room with computers and a number of monitors showing views of both inside and outside the house. Two other rooms each feature three double-bunk beds. It is the lower bed of one of these where Corey sleeps and he informs me that space does not allow for the luxury of a separate bedroom. The only aberration is a small room intentionally set aside for children. There are warm colours here, pastel animals stuck to the wall with books and toys placed on pink shelving. Soft carpet finishes a space completely at odds with everything else in the home. Corey deflects my attempts at understanding who is intended to live here.
We move underground and find that the second floor is given over to storage in a completely open, windowless space. Lights automatically flicker on as we alight. The floor above is held up by vertical steel pillars, which brace matching horizontal beams. While there is some visible insulation above, there is no pretence for any sort of comfort anywhere on this level. All manner of items are stored in open shelving stacked so deeply that there is only space enough for a single person to walk between them. With just a glance I see a variety of tools, cabling, machine parts, solar cells and a number of unidentifiable items. Everything stored here will one day repair or replace any component of the house, in a preparation for a future without a hardware store.
A gentle hum comes from the other side of the space and the source is a petrol generator that Corey is testing. There is a tightly sealed exhaust vent leading to the outside, which ensures that toxic fumes don’t collect inside. The smell of petrol and grease remains with us.
Further underground and the lowest level is deeply dark, with lights automatically flickering on as we enter. Despite moments of complete darkness before illumination, Corey seems unflinching and I see his confident flowing movement once the next light ignites.
There is an eerie sense of solid earth surrounding us now. The initial dry chill of the first two floors now gives way to a warmer, moist environment. We enter a large space given over exclusively to nurturing subterranean food production. Vertical pylons match the location of their brethren on the floor above. A mix of hydroponic and earth-bound vegetables stretch from floor to ceiling along three walls with a long set of shelving bisecting the space. A sophisticated network of water pipes, power cabling and light fixtures make navigation a delicate process. Fertiliser and plant-life again assail the senses.
Corey suggests that it is time to head outside again and we are met with cold drizzle and a gentle fog. I ask about water collection and power generation and Corey points out solar cells installed across most of the roof surface, which feed two batteries mounted in the house’s middle level. Four wind turbines stand on tall poles that reach well above the height of the perimeter fencing. As the fog swirls around them, I can just see each lazily spinning through the fog.
The compound has sophisticated water collection, where rain is stored and treated in large tanks pressed against the back of the house. A myriad of pipework provides water where needed.
Nothing here is by accident. The slice of world that Corey has created is stoic and survivalist, just like the man who created it. The lush life he has cultivated has no beauty – only survival, only function.
Everything here serves a master paranoid about an uncertain future.
