I’m upside down again. North is South, winter is summer. Australia is a fantastic country for swimming, surfing and outdoor life, but as I have been basking in Perth’s temperatures well above 30C and Sydney’s 25-28C, it has struck me that the challenges of water harvesting and watering of a community vegetable garden are in a whole different league from those we face in Brighton.

In Sydney, I came across the Mort Bay Community Garden – a fantastic project in Birchgrove, not far from the city centre. Friends showed me the site on an early evening stroll: it’s much bigger than the London Road Station pocket-handkerchief site, but it had been developed from waste land. There was clearly a solid irrigation system in place. A quick look at their web-site shows their useful watering rota.

They use corrugated iron raised beds to grow a whole range of produce: lots of herbs and hot climate vegetables such as sweet corn, aubergines and peppers, but also fruit bushes.

Looking through their website, it was really interesting to see a similar range of activities: general maintenance, planning planting, organising events such as a harvest supper, composting … Looking around their large site, I was really impressed with the number of things growing so well in hot weather – and not a water butt in sight.