Every Saturday morning, 55-year-old Sally King happily makes the hour-long return trip from her home in Palmerston to a supermarket in Darwin, rescuing food from an alternative route to landfill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Returning home with her ute\u00a0stacked with groceries, Sally then starts unloading crates of fresh produce into a heavily air-conditioned room.<\/p>\n
Her home is quickly transformed into a makeshift distribution centre for the mutual-aid kitchen Sally organises over Facebook.<\/p>\n
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Sally King, left, says “there is a sense of camaraderie” between Aunty’s Free Feeds volunteers. (ABC News: Sam Parry)<\/p>\n
For almost six years, Aunty’s Free Feeds has been serving home-cooked meals to anybody who needs them from a pop-up buffet in the car park of a Palmerston swimming pool.<\/p>\n
“No matter whether it’s rain, hail or shine, we turn up at the pool and we just give out whatever we’ve got,” Sally says.<\/p>\n
The concept was founded by local Reanna-Dawn Sanders, who launched the program with a simple menu of sausages and bread, explains Sally.<\/p>\n
“She is the original Aunty and the rest of us just consider ourselves the adopted aunts,” she says.<\/p>\n
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The meals on offer at Aunty’s Free Feeds depends on avaliability of ingredients and “volunteers’ skill set”. (ABC News: Sam Parry)<\/p>\n
Pop-up buffet in pool car park<\/p>\n
By 4:50pm on Sunday afternoon, a bleak and shadeless car park in Palmerston rapidly transforms as volunteers set up trestle tables and trays of food.<\/p>\n
The team is well practised in bumping in this efficient operation, which often feeds over 150 people.<\/p>\n
From roast chicken to stews, salads and desserts, the colourful line-up is a welcome sight in a part of outer suburban Darwin where many are doing it tough.<\/p>\n
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Volunteers “take a bit of pride” in helping others in an informal way. (ABC News: Sam Parry)<\/p>\n
The types of meals on offer “will depend on the volunteers’ skill set”, Sally explains, adding that the availability of ingredients also dictates the weekly menu.<\/p>\n
“Some people can make something out of almost nothing,” she says.<\/p>\n
This week’s offering includes a savory mince dish with edible gourds, after the group received a bulk donation of the squash-like vegetable.<\/p>\n
“We do have a couple of people who will regularly give us a cash donation, and we mainly use that to buy ingredients for the volunteers to then make other food,” Sally says.<\/p>\n
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Aunty’s Free Feeds serves up home-cooked meals to anybody who needs them. (ABC News: Sam Parry)<\/p>\n
‘Severe food insecurity’ rife<\/p>\n