It is pretty dry at this time of year around Morawa in Western Australia's Mid West, but about thirty kilometres east of town is an oasis in the red dirt, a small thriving horticultural project.
The Midwest Employment and Economic Development Aboriginal Cooperation (MEEDAC) has planted a variety of summer vegetables that are bound for local markets and the local Karara mine site camp kitchen.
The garden includes, pumpkin, watermelon, rock melon, honeydew melon, squash and zucchini as well as a trial of corn.
MEEDAC Project Manager Harry Taylor and the project participants faced some interesting challenges establishing the patch including uninvited wildlife and a lack of wild bees.
He says after an excellent initial germination they were stumped as to why subsequent plantings were not coming up.
"We just couldn't work out what was happening we had about a fifty percent germination, so we struggled for a bit and found out some field mice had moved in and they were eating our seed before they had time to germinate," he says.
Birdlife including cockatoos and galahs also flocked to the young plants.
"Some days when you came to the veggie patch, a lot of them were in the veggies and they were just nipping off some of the plants."
"We had to do replants there as well, but we seem to have got on top of that and the mice and the cockatoos and everything are leaving us alone at the moment and it is all going pretty well," he says.