A community garden which created jobs for 76 future council employees and made use of recycled construction materials has opened on Thursday Island.
The project was overseen by Torres Shire Council and completed in partnership with community apprenticeship program My Pathways.
Mayor of Torres Shire Vonda Malone told the Indigenous Leaders Forum that the Frog Gully Community Garden had gone operational last month.
“We are now able to encourage our community to grow their own food and supplement their diet with fresh food grown locally.”
“The project also encourages people in the community to go back to traditional practices of growing their own food,” she said.
Community members can submit expressions of interest to council to maintain and share a garden plot, which also makes use of community waste in the form of compost.
Food scraps are collected from local businesses and fed back into the garden, which has been in the planning stages for several years.
The council also received funding support from the Torres Strait Regional Authority to develop waste education projects in partnership with the team from Dirtgirlworld, the ABC Kids TV show.