A lush green oasis lies among mine shafts on the opal fields of Lightning Ridge.
Everything from avocados and olives to almonds and corn grow against a backdrop of white opal dust, as a few intrepid farmers find new ways to grow food in the outback.
Ashley Steed's aquaponics greenhouse sits just off a non-gazetted dirt road in one of the outback NSW town's many opal fields.
"There are beds made up with gravel, which holds the seedlings, and there's water flowing through those beds constantly carrying oxygen and nutrients," he said.
"And the water comes from the fish tanks."
A series of large water tanks hold hundreds of silver perch — a freshwater fish that copes with both the extreme heat and winter frosts endured through the year.
The fish wastewater is then pumped into a filtration system where it is re-oxygenated before it snakes through garden beds filled with gravel.
There's no soil in this system, so the gravel acts as a support structure for the plants as they grow while the constant stream of nutrient-dense water acts as the fertiliser.
"There are two different bacteria, there's one that changes the ammonia that comes from the fish into a nitrite and then there's another bacteria that gets going after that and turns it into a nitrate," said Mr Steed.
Another grower on the opal fields is on a mission to show farmers how to 'plant' water.
Taking inspiration from syntropic agriculture, a farming system developed through experimentation on degraded Brazilian farmland, Rebel Black is building a food forest to green her patch of desert.
Syntropics aims to mimic rainforest systems including controlling access to sunlight, using mulches and biomass as ground cover, and planting trees and food crops in succession.
"If you plant in succession, you've got zucchinis and pumpkins on the bottom row, and mid-storey fruit trees, and then a top storey of nut trees, you actually build cash crops that mitigate the risk of monoculture as well," Ms Black said.
Towards the end of a seven-year drought the region faced until 2019, Ms Black said she grew disheartened by the drought mitigation strategies being advocated.
"I was in a drought meeting in Walgett and some farmers got up and said the best drought mitigation strategy in this region is to pull more trees down so that when it's a good season we can grow more cotton," she said.
"I get it because monoculture cropping makes a lot of money, but you can't deny the link between longer droughts and fewer trees."
Having the first semi-arid syntropic system in Australia, Rebel Black is hoping her property can become a living classroom to show that farming and forestry can profitably co-exist.
"If we can show people that we can grow more with less, that we can retain water in an ecosystem, that it can be productive, if people can see it they might believe it and they might replicate it at scale," Ms Black said.
"I think the mirage or that sort of 'oasis in the desert' stuff that people talk about is a mirage," she said.
