Zac Efron's Byron Bay house is made entirely of hemp.

It's been six years since Zac Efron quietly bought a block of land in northern NSW during the chaos of Covid.

128 hectares of lush rainforest tucked an hour inland from Byron Bay, his land is near the hamlet of Tomewin on the NSW-Queensland border.

At the time, it felt like a curiosity. A celebrity whim, perhaps.

It wasn't.

Now 38, Efron is not only building his dream home on that land — he's been living nearby in Byron Bay while construction gets underway, according to reports.

Sources close to the actor say he's serious about putting down permanent roots in Australia. His Los Angeles mansion has been listed for sale.

So it seems, he's not coming back.

The project, which Efron has dubbed 'FutureCave', is unlike any celebrity home you've seen before.

There's no infinity pool. No media room. No Selling Sunset lift.

Instead, there are six bedroom pods connected by outdoor walkways, rooftop gardens crawling with butterflies and fireflies, 500-year-old cedar trees left completely untouched, and walls made not from concrete — but hemp.

'The coolest house ever built.'

The man behind the vision is Dutch-Australian eco-designer Joost Bakker, a former florist turned zero-waste evangelist who first met Efron in 2021 during filming of his Netflix series Down to Earth.

The two bonded over hours on the roof of Bakker's family home in the Dandenong Ranges — a conversation that was supposed to be a quick dinner and stretched on for three or four hours.

"I've lived just about everywhere you can for several months or even years at this point," Efron said.

"Every time I go to Joost's I have a sense of 'this is actually what I want in life'. It just seems right."

Efron has given Bakker one instruction above all others: don't cut down a single tree.

Everything else is open. Hemp bricks. Oyster shell materials. Rooftop gardens heavy enough to require a steel frame supporting 100 tonnes of soil. A sodium-ion battery (no cobalt, no lithium).

Even Efron's mattress will be made from hemp, in a one-off collaboration with Sealy.

The curtains. The pillows. The kitchen joinery. All hemp, sourced from a farm in Hillston, a small town in southern NSW better known for its potatoes.

"If we pull off what we're about to attempt, it's going to potentially change a lot," Efron said. "The original pitch from Joost was already next level — now it's gotten to a place that it's potentially the coolest house ever built."

Why is Zac Efron living in Australia?

Efron credits a piece of advice from an unexpected source: Russell Crowe, his co-star on the 2022 film The Greatest Beer Run Ever.

Crowe told him to get land in Australia while he was young — something Crowe himself did in 1996, buying a property near Coffs Harbour that he's since described as "the panacea."

Efron listened.

"I love Australia, it's cool," he said, with the understated ease of someone who has clearly already made up his mind.

But beyond the lifestyle, there's something more grounded at play. Efron says the Byron hinterland offers something his Hollywood life simply doesn't.

"I live a pretty fast-paced life and work quite a bit, so in between movies and press tours, my number one goal is always to take time for myself and rest and recharge and to be in nature as much as possible," he said.

"This land just feels like it's perfect for that."

A home — and something bigger.

FutureCave is designed to house Efron's extended family — his parents, his brother Dylan, and his two younger half-siblings.

Each pod has its own bathroom and rooftop garden, oriented to catch the northern sun. The surrounding land features waterfalls, spring-fed dams, and virgin rainforest.

But Efron and Bakker are hoping the project becomes more than a personal retreat.

They want hemp to go mainstream — in Australia and globally.

Bakker is already commercialising his building system under the name Greenhouse by Joost, offering pre-fabricated, flat-pack structures that can be assembled without specialist builders.

"What if the materials that go into the buildings of the future restore soil health and then create habitat for endangered species?" Bakker said.

It's an ambitious ask.

But then, so was buying 128 hectares of NSW rainforest during a pandemic, on a tip from Russell Crowe, with a plan to one day call it home.

Turns out that worked out just fine.

Feature image: Getty.

In the quiet of Byron Bay's hinterland, Zac Efron is building something. He calls it his 'futurecave'.

'The coolest house ever built.'

Why is Zac Efron living in Australia?

A home — and something bigger.

Cassandra Green