Meet the growers: Watarrka School

It’s not just vegetables, herbs and fruit that are flourishing in the red earth of Luritja country in the heart of the Northern Territory. Christine Munro, teaching principal at Watarrka School, has become well acquainted with the benefits that gardening brings to children (and their families). She moved to the Lilla community, where the school is based, about eight years ago from the Finke community, at the western edge of the Simpson Desert, where she’d seen those benefits firsthand.

Christine explains that these remote communities have never had great access to fresh, healthy produce, having to travel to Alice Springs, some 240km north-east as the crow flies. Planting a food garden was the solution. “When I arrived eight years ago, there was just the basic greenhouse structure, which was in disrepair. There was so much else to do in that first year that it took about eight months before we started cleaning it up, repairing the irrigation and putting in our first plants.”

Despite being the school’s only teacher, apart from an occasional short-term relief teacher, Christine has done a lot of the work on the garden herself.

The children, who hail from Lilla and the nearby communities of Wanmarra and Ulpanyali, have proved to be willing helpers. “The kids love the physicality of connecting with the earth,” says Christine.

Solid foundations

Christine has also had plenty of support from organisations, including the Watarrka Foundation, which runs local community projects and offers support and materials. “The Watarrka Foundation has provided lots of plants, especially the trees,” says Christine. “One of the Foundation’s partners, Slow Food Australia, has done many of the heavier building projects, such as building the fence around the orchard, and Remote Tours NT has brought various schools here to learn about Indigenous culture. Their many hands have made light work of our weeding drives!”

The Watarrka Foundation also provided the school with a new classroom with a working kitchen, where students can learn how to prepare and cook produce. “For a while there, the kids would even drink green smoothies, though not so enthusiastically…” says Christine.

The school has had seven successful growing years, producing a mind-boggling array of vegetables, herbs and fruit in ‘the greenhouse’, which is about 9m by 12m, two wicking beds, and a fenced orchard. Of course, there’s lots of sun, and water is sourced from a bore that services two tanks on a hill, which is then gravity-fed to the community. “All our irrigation systems are on timers,” says Christine. “We don’t get much rainfall. In 2021, we had a little bit, but all at once. You might get 22mm of rain, then nothing again for nine months!”

Rangers to the rescue

Recently, Christine has enlisted the help of local Watarrka rangers to teach the kids about growing indigenous plants. “I think I’ve been a little over-ambitious with the amount of water I’ve used,” she admits, “and I want to moderate what I’m doing to make it more environmentally friendly. I don’t want to run the bore dry. The fruit trees do take a bit of water, so I’ve been working with the rangers to plant native trees in the orchard, too. We’ve planted five new quandong trees, and we’re going to try some watarka [Acacia ligulata, or umbrella bush] and other native plants that produce food or bush medicine, as they don’t take as much water. I’ll probably plant more of those around the school, so it becomes a living, breathing food area – our little bit of paradise. The introduced fruits have their place, but I need to be more conscious of what I do in terms of the environment.”

It’s been quite the learning curve for Christine, who’s long had her own vegie patch, although in very different conditions. “I’m originally from Invercargill on New Zealand’s South Island, where we have lots of water,” she laughs. “But my interest has developed because I can see how it benefits the students and community as a whole. Picking organic fruit straight off the tree – how can you get more vitamins and minerals than that?”

Photos courtesy of Watarrka Foundation, M Goater