At first glance, Eldorado looks like any other sleepy little town hidden in a beautiful part of the world.

It’s only when you start talking to the people who live there, three hours north-east of Melbourne, that it becomes clear how different Eldorado is.

I don’t know if it’s because there was gold buried in the hills, but its residents really seem to connect with the land.

The glorious bush of Yorta Yorta Country on a clear day with a blue sky.

Eldorado is about 30 minutes away from the regional city of Wangaratta. (ABC)

Maybe that’s why this little community is home to so many like-minded folk with a firm commitment to the environment.

People like Sam Anderson, who makes towering sculptures using recycled materials, and Kate Nottingham, who runs an off-grid living festival.

Sam Anderson smiles while touching his giant sculpture of a horse using recycled materials, and talks to Myf.

“Being able to recycle is probably one of the main drivers for me being an artist; I feel like I’m doing my little part for the earth,” Sam Anderson said. (ABC)

And we can’t forget Hamish Skermer.

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I met Hamish for the first time back in the 90s. I was working at a free music street press paper, and he was advertising his Folk Rhythm and Life festival, which started in 1996 and ran until 2025, when it was cancelled at the last minute due to permit problems.

It was while running this festival that Hamish came up with the idea to create portable compost toilets.

Hamish holds a finger up making a point while talking, dry bushland on his property behind him.

Hamish Skermer studied environmental science, has run his own festival for decades, and cares deeply for the environment. He said his toilets bring all three of those passions together. (ABC)

In the years since, Hamish has taken his toilets from regional Victoria all the way to Glastonbury in the UK. He also hopes to see them in developing countries.

“The thing that does inspire me is taking this really simple technology into places where community members are affected — both in health and in happiness — with a constant lack of good sanitation; 2.6 billion people don’t have toilets,” he said. 

Polishing turds into ‘diamonds’

Hamish’s loos are pretty basic: he puts wheelie bins underneath roll-in, roll-out festival toilets, and adds a simple chemical-free recipe of ingredients that kills harmful pathogens, allowing the waste to be safely used as compost later.

A row of composting toilets with colourful external doors at a festival, with people using them.

These aren’t your average drop toilets. (ABC)

The beauty of them is that they don’t smell. Yes, there’s a certain aroma, but it’s not like some of the horrific drop toilets I’ve used in camping grounds.

Hamish, who studied environmental science at university, told me giving people “dignity at events” was his motivation and that he hoped to “change the world from the bottom up”.

“Portaloos don’t give you that experience of good times … [My toilets] don’t use any water or chemicals,” he said.

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“They’re clean … we’re turning the nutrients back into organic compost, and we hope to grow food with it — anyone who’s got a garden understands that the gardener or the farmer with the most manure wins.

“There’s that saying: ‘You can’t polish a turd into a diamond’. I’m like … Well, you can.”

As well as being smart, Hamish is hilarious. That man has more poo jokes than anyone I’ve ever met.

He did a “pooetry” rap for us that he had ready to go for camera — it’s basically Hamish’s journey through poo.

He might actually have a future career in hip hop if poo doesn’t work out for him, but I think it is.

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Hamish knows as well as anyone how dangerous untreated human waste is. 

“There’s a really good reason why your bum and your mouth are separated,” he said.

However, there are ways to make it safe — as he had me demonstrate.

Touching composted poo wasn’t on my bingo card this year, but clearly I’ll do anything for Back Roads. 

Myf points at Hamish's hand holding compost out to her as they stand in a field packed with bins.

Skermer said these are the sort of “nuggets” he likes finding. (ABC)

While that’s something I probably don’t want to do again, we have so much of it that we should probably start to follow Hamish’s lead and put it back into the earth.

“It’s just accepting that we’re part of ecology, not separate to it,” he said.

“Nine-tenths of it is in your mind. It used to be banana. Then it was a turd. Then we’ve composted and now we’re going to [grow] basil.”

Yeah, Hamish has forever changed my perspective on how we deal with human poo. 

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