Australia iron mining town eyes tourists, farmers as boom ends

Port Hedland, Australia

AQUA farms growing super foods could soon materialise in the rust-red dust of the Australian outback, alongside wheat fields, haystacks and cattle herds, as tumbling iron prices drive the minerals-rich Pilbara region to transform itself.

On a small patch of desert 250 kilometres south of the Pilbara's Port Hedland, InterClinical Laboratories has started Plankton Farms to propagate a type of micro-algae called Dunaliella salina, reknowned for its antioxidant properties.