PILOT PROJECT: Landscaping for Health – Old Knowledge, New Mounds 30 years laters
Old Ideas, New Ground
The mound building program on the APY lands began in the 1980’s as a health project by Nganampa Health. We are undertaking a Landscaping for Health project again, 30 years later in Western Australia.
Image: local team hard at work building dust barriers, tree guards and stormwater retention mounds
Over the past three weeks this October, Owen Kelly from Dogspike Design & Architecture has been working with a local Community Team on Spinifex Country in Western Australia to complete the first test house for a new yard works program, part of the broader Housing for Health project supported by Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) Repairs and Maintenance funding.
The pilot is the first of 22 houses planned to receive the works and picks up an idea with a long history in Housing for Health: using earth mounds, shade and dust mitigating landscaping and practical yard works including windbreaks and outdoor cooking areas to improve the living environment around the house.
Mounds and health
The yard is an important part of the living environment, particularly where houses are crowded and much of daily life happens outside.
Mounds are simple, but they can do many jobs. Shaping the ground can help manage where vehicles drive and park, reduce dust, control stormwater, protect areas for planting and define safer, more useful outdoor living spaces.
The first house on Spinifex Country is being used to test the project including materials, connection details, construction methods including working with Community to refine the design. It follows a long-standing Healthabitat approach: start small, test and trial, work through the pain points, then scale up what works.
Old ideas, tested again
Image: example images from resource document ‘Mounds Improve Environments’ (below)
Mound building is not new to Housing for Health.
Nganampa Health began building mounds on the APY Lands in the 1980s, with the work continuing through Housing for Health projects in the 1990s and again in 2000.
The thinking was practical: the yard is part of the house.
The earlier work used mounds to manage vehicles, water and dust, establish vegetation and create more usable space for outside living. More than 30 years later, the work on Spinifex Country is taking those lessons and testing them again in a different place, with different materials, conditions and people.
What comes next
With the first test house complete, lessons from the pilot can now inform the yard works across the remaining 20 houses.
The broader Housing for Health project is also moving into its major fix stage, with the HAFF funding allowing works to extend into further yard improvements and temperature control upgrades alongside essential repairs identified through survey–fix.
It is an old idea being put to work again: start small, learn by doing, and build from what works.
Stay tuned as the work moves from one test house to 22, and we share what the teams learn along the way.
Further readings and reference documents
- HH News item – https://www.healthabitat.com/project-archives-landscaping-for-health-on-apy-lands/
- ‘The Use of Mounds to Improve Community Environments on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands’ by MW Last, April 2002
- ‘Storm Water Management in Communities on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands’ by MW Last, April 2002
- ‘Mounds Improve Environments -1’, by MW Last, July 2002
- ‘Mounds improve Environments – 2’, by MW Last, July 2002
- ‘Storm Water Management -1’ by MW Last, February 2002
We would like to thank the Community workers, members and stakeholders for your support. We are looking forward to the coming months and seeing the yards come to life.
