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Former city councillor/Greens candidate for mayor of Brisbane Jonathan Sriranganathan said “despite not being connected to water, sewerage or electricity grids, this style of housing has actually made me feel much more connected to the world around me”. Picture: Facebook/jonathansri.com
A controversial senior Green has opened up about life without connection to water, sewerage and electricity grids on his $37,000 houseboat – and being thankful it got him off the rental merry-go-round.
Former Greens mayoral candidate for Brisbane, Jonathan Sriranganathan has never shied away from controversy – including shocking blue chip homeowners during his 2024 campaign run with a proposal to turn Ascot racecourse into a social housing estate.
His alternative lifestyle was a choice made by he and partner Anna – who moved onto their houseboat in 2017 and have never left.
“I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone can or should live on boats, but I do think learning about different kinds of housing and ways of living helps us imagine trajectories of transformation that can get us out of the mess we’re all currently in,” he told followers in his blog jonathansri.com.
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Greens leader Jonathan Sriranganathan ran for Brisbane mayor in March this year. Picture: David Kelly.
Mr Sriranganathan went into great depth on his houseboat life in his offgridhouseboat blogpost, saying the couple found the secondhand houseboat on Gumtree, paying about $30,000 off a strong belief that it was “much cheaper and more sustainable than constructing a new home from new materials”.
They reportedly spent $7000 on improvements like solar panels, batteries, and a new 12-volt fridge.
“It was a lot of money to drop on something that will gradually decay and depreciate, but not having to pay rent has freed up more of our time and money for other creative and community projects”.
The couple had been living in rental sharehouses before they made the leap onto their houseboat to not just find a more sustainable way to live, but combat rising costs, and erase fears over whether their lease would be renewed.
Living the high life on his houseboat is former city councillor/candidate for mayor of Brisbane Jonathan Sriranganathan. Picture: jonathansri.com.
“We’ve lived on the boat for seven years now. It’s an 8m-long, twin-hull bay cruiser. We named it ‘Afterglow.’ Initially, we planned to move around in it regularly, hopping from one location to another. But the old engine proved unreliable.”
Mr Sriranganathan said they had “stressful misadventures” when their engine died halfway up the river so “these days we usually keep it nestled beside the mangroves on one of Maiwar’s tributaries”.
The cabin of their houseboat was five metres long and 2.7m wide, he said, with low ceilings “about a few centimetres above my head”.
“Outside the cabin, the front and rear decks extend for another metre or two, and are crowded with pot plants, large compost tubs, 400 litres of water tanks, a rickety shoe rack, and a few gardening tools.”
Jonathan Sriranganathan (right) and his partner, Anna, moved onto their houseboat in 2017 and haven’t left. Picture: David Kelly.
They call the roof of their houseboat the top deck, partly enclosing it with a bimini and solar panels on a makeshift wooden frame Mr Sriranganathan built.
“Occasionally we hold joyful candlelit dinner parties with eight or 10 or sometimes more friends crammed onto this little rooftop, scurrying up and down the ladder to shuttle food and drinks to and from the kitchen.”
“This is the home we inhabit: a 13.5sq m indoor space where we sleep, bathe, relax, prepare and eat food, store most of our possessions, and sometimes entertain guests. Our bed is less than 1.3m wide, but roomy enough for both of us. If needed, the kitchen table and seats can fold down as a second similar-sized guest bed.”
The houseboat, he said, changed their approach to life, including simple pleasures like a cup of tea being made with loose-leaf in a teapot now rather than individual tea bags – with the leftover tipped into the compost bin the next day.
In keeping with his green ethos, Mr Sriranganathan installed a rainwater tank on the boat in 2017. Picture: Annette Dew.
“Boat life definitely makes me more conscious of what I consume, and where my waste goes. We compost our food scraps, tissues, most cardboard packaging, and even our poo. Sunflowers now grow out of soil that used to be our sh*t.”
Their houseboat dictated the timing of their land activities too, thanks to an “often-wobbly gangplank” that goes underwater at high tides and had “an almost 2-metre drop” during lowest tides.
“Decisions about when to come home in the evenings and the timing of shopping and laundromat trips are often shaped by how steep the gangplank will be,” he said.
Winter had its challenges for their solar power, with lower battery levels given shorter days and more cloud cover. Their rainwater storage capacity, he said, was about 400 litres.
A file picture of Afterglow when the couple first moved onto the houseboat. Picture: Annette Dew.
“Conventional Australian houses and apartments often shut out other species and keep non-human neighbours as far away as possible, whereas on our home, they’re much closer and easier to spot,” Mr Sriranganathan said.
The couple bought a $20 12-volt ceiling fan so their home wouldn’t become a hothouse whenever they closed everything up to ward off “swarms of relentless midges” during warmer weather.
On the houseboat, when things go bump in the night, it’s nature at work. “Late one night, we were woken by a wet, thunking clamour. Bleary-eyed, half-dreaming, we staggered out the back door to find a huge fish flopping in one of the kayaks. We’re vegetarian, so I reverently helped it back into the water.”
Mr Sriranganathan said their houseboat was “significantly smaller than most tiny houses on wheels that are gradually appearing in Brisbane backyards”. Those he said usually have an indoor floor space of 20sq m to 30sq m, while his home was even tinier at about 13.5sq m.
But, he said, “I’m told that’s actually bigger than the average inner-city home in many Asian cities”.
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