Welcome to the website of the Institute of Backyard Studies.

The Institute is an organisation dedicated to the preservation and growth of backyard culture in Australia and elsewhere.

To some people, a “backyard operation” is synonymous with dodgy, low quality, illicit and generally dubious business.

Destroying this stereotype is one of the Institute’s main aims.

In fact the backyard and its associated institutions - the shed and the barbecue to name a couple - can make a strong claim to being the very generators of our prosperity, well-being and sanity.

The thoughtful application of the principles of mechanical advantage - the screw, the lever, the pulley, the wheel and axle and the inclined plane and wedge - meant that solving problems was a source of delight, satisfaction and even occasionally profit.

But with urban infill housing slowly taking over the backyards of our cities, this personal playground of creative minds is being obliterated.

We are becoming an indoor, inward looking nation, gazing out on patio courtyards paved from edge to edge and ordered to within an inch of their lives. The woodpile down the back or the pile of useful scrap has vanished. Rather than fix anything we ring up the man to come and install a new part or we buy a new plastic version made by slaves in some unseen part of the world.

Television, flapping away at computers and the minimising of all risk now dominates our lives. We are diminished as humans by technology almost as much as we benefit from it. We are literally losing touch with the world.

This website is for people who reckon that it’s no bad thing to get your hands dirty or those who don’t throw good stuff out at the drop of a hat.

The answer’s in our own backyard.

Mark Thomson.
Research Director