Ron Edwards first became interested in mud brick construction in 1950, when he bought a block of land in Eltham and began to build a mud brick home. A move to Far North Queensland meant it never did get finished, but his interest in the subject was not easy to extinguish. In 1977 a trip to China exposed Ron to an easy and efficient way of constructing with mud brick which had been used by the Chinese for centuries. Six trips to China later, Ron wrote Mud Brick and Earth Building the Chinese Way with Lin Wei Hao. He used the techniques he had learned to build his own expansive residence, studio and printery in the hills in Kuranda. His next book on the subject, Basic Mud Brick – re written as Mud Brick Techniques provided comprehensive instructions on making mud bricks and utilising them for construction. He followed this with a manual on rammed earth techniques. In 1997 Ron travelled to England to investigate the oldest and simplest form of earth building – Cob. He was able to meet some of the leading experts in the field, and attend practical Cob building sessions, which became the subject of his fourth book on the subject.