Hi Lucas,
I’ll answer your questions below:
Q: Am I right in assuming that the bush tucker nursery will definitely be located in Dungarra, Redden Island, near Cairns (NOT in Port Douglas)?
A: No, Dungarra has been identified as one of three potential sites for the hub (alongside Wangetti and Taylor Point), so it will not definitely be located there. You can explore all three sites in our interactive series and learn a bit more about each place. For the purposes of your project, you are welcome to choose one of these three sites as a location and base your design proposal on that. There are benefits and drawbacks to this approach, for example if you were to choose one site which doesn’t end up being the hub, will your design be flexible enough to be implemented in another location? However choosing a specific location means that you can narrow in and think more practically about your proposal’s design and implementation.
Q: Secondly, if Dawul Wuru currently don’t grow any bush tucker, why are there pictures of bush tucker at the bottom of the design area 4 webpage, that are labelled “bush tucker at dungarra”? Doesn’t this mean that they are currently growing bush tucker?
A: The bush tucker on Dungarra is growing wildly. Bush tucker grew, and continues to grow, naturally without human intervention before First Nations people started cultivating it thousands of years ago. Bush tucker still grows naturally today which is why Dawul Wuru have expressed an interest in bush tucker gardening – so that people can benefit from it more widely due to scale and accessibility if they were to cultivate it. Only relying on naturally growing plants limits the reach as there has been a decline in naturally occuring bush tucker in recent years, likely due to expanding urban areas and the effects of climate change. A nursery space would enable Dawul Wuru to cultivate bush tucker and native plants on a small scale for community use and local revegetation, as well as being used to teach others about bush tucker and bush tucker gardening.
Q: Thirdly, what water source are they using to grow all those bush tucker plants that are displayed in those photos?
A: As mentioned above, these plants are naturally growing so they rely on rainwater without human intervention.
Q: How big were the trees that produced the bush tucker that are in the photos on the EWB website?
A: The size of the trees varied considerably, from 1.5m tall to up to 20m+. Regarding your concerns about the height of the plants, the idea behind this project is not to uproot the existing plants located in Dungarra and replant them, nor to only recreate the plants which exist there. Rather, based on the information you can gather from your own research (including resources such as the guide linked above) you should make recommendations on which species might be appropriate to grow in a bush tucker nursery, and identify how big the nursery may be. As you can see in the document I linked earlier, not all bush tucker plants are tall trees – it is up to you to make recommendations about which plants would be most appropriate. While the plants on Dungarra are a good starting point in terms of what can grow, they are not the only bush tucker plants which should be considered.
Hope this helps!
Rachel
Rachel Alford