Ikara Flinders Living Seed Bank

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Located at the intersection of arid desert and pre-colonial grain belt of Indigenous Australia, Leigh Creek thrives as a service town for the Flinders Ranges region, boasting existing infrastructure and high-quality renewable energy. Yet, its ability to develop a sustainable future beyond mining has been severely hindered by an entrenched culture of dependence and varying scales of exclusion. Trapped in a resource or 'staples' trap, Leigh Creek is stuck in a cyclical development path, where inherited characteristics such as high population turnover and imported capital are simply transferred over to a new industry, like tourism. Founded on the challenges and opportunities often associated with industry-reliant towns, a new diversified knowledge-based industry offers an alternative path for the region, not locked into 'place and time' like resource and tourism-based industries; allowing it to take advantage of the clusters and networks of human capital often present in remote regions.