Australia’s first Indigenous urban food production farm, created by Mirvac and cultural start-up Yerrabingin, shows how the development industry can apply Indigenous knowledge and innovative design thinking to build reconciliation into placemaking.
On the rooftop of the community building at South Eveleigh, a new garden is taking shape.
More than 30 native bush foods – from finger limes and warrigal greens to native raspberries and sea celery – are being planted out under the Sydney sun. Large wrought-iron trellises, forged from the resident blacksmith at the nearby Carriageworks, will soon be festooned with climbing medicinal plants.
Mirvac’s $1 billion transformation of South Eveleigh, previously known as Australian Technology Park, in Redfern is just the latest evolution of a site that has great cultural significance to first Australians.
Before the brick and iron factories and foundries arose, South Eveleigh was sandhills and wetlands. The Gadigal people – one of 29 clans of the Eora nation – fished its waters and lived upon its flora and fauna.
After the arrival of Europeans, the swamp at Redfern was a rendezvous point for Indigenous people, or as one first-hand account put it “great feasting grounds as well as the scene of many a hard-fought battle”.
By the mid-19th century, the Eveleigh Railway Workshops drew many Aboriginal people to the area in search of work, and it has remained a centre for First Australians to this day.
Mirvac’s project director, William Walker, says “paying respects to the traditional owners of South Eveleigh is important to Mirvac,” and the partnership is an opportunity to “celebrate Aboriginal culture and heritage”.
Combining the principles of permaculture, Indigenous knowledge and design thinking, the rooftop farm is just one of the projects Yerrabingin will deliver and manage for Mirvac.
Yerrabingin was founded by Clarence Slockee and Christian Hampson earlier this year to disrupt conventional approaches that address Aboriginal disadvantage.
According to Hampson, the partnership with Mirvac presents new opportunitiesto “problem solve” by embedding reconciliation into placemaking while harnessing the potential of Aboriginal social enterprise.
“We weren’t looking to design a garden. We were looking to design an experience,” Hampson explains.
The design team – which brought together Aboriginal community members and industry professionals – began by thinking about “how people would feel when they were in the space and how it would connect them with Aboriginal culture and storytelling”.
“The garden is one of the solutions to create the experience, but it’s not the only solution,” Hampson explains.
The garden, once complete, will play host to monthly events, from workshops on native permaculture and Aboriginal culture to cooking classes with local chefs and immersive storytelling tours especially for school children.
“The programs we have incorporated into this space mean the garden will be self-funded by the sale of the Indigenous urban food the farm produces,” Clarence Slockee explains.
Mirvac and Yerrabingin hope this prototype can be applied to other green spaces and used by Aboriginal communities and councils to expand the economic and storytelling opportunities on their land, Slockee explains.
Plans are also underway for the South Eveleigh Aboriginal Cultural Landscape Garden, which will also grow native and medicinal plant species and bush food. Both projects form part of the team’s wider vision for a multi-layered heritage experience at the site.
“As our cities grow, we need to incorporate more natural and cultural heritage within new developments,” Slockee says, adding that Yerrabingin’s approach ticks a lot of boxes, addressing the urban heat island effect, reconciliation and placemaking among them.
The lessons to be learnt at South Eveleigh will unfold as the buildings open and as the 18,000 new workers and residents move in. But for now, one lesson is clear: every Australian site is an Aboriginal place with an Aboriginal story. While the development industry can be worried about “overstepping protocol,” as Hampson says, we must start by bringing our cultures together.
Mirvac’s careful consideration of South Eveleigh’s pre-contact significance is a model for the industry. By understanding what a place means to Aboriginal culture and heritage, we can celebrate that culture in a respectful way, and create a destination that is uniquely Australian.