<html><head></head><body dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><font size="5" class="">Bush medicines: </font><span style="font-size: x-large;" class="">Traditional remedies </span><div class=""><br class=""><font size="4" class=""><b class="">SYDNEY MORNING HERALD</b></font><div class=""><a href="https://www.smh.com.au/" class="">https://www.smh.com.au</a><br class=""><br class="">By Julie Power<br class="">June 6, 2021 — 12.00am<br class=""><br class="">For millennia, Indigenous Australians have made herbal remedies from local plants for everything from treating snake bite to preventing pregnancy.<br class=""><br class="">Now traditional bush medicines made by Indigenous people in the Northern Territory are being sold to retailers from Canberra to the United States while providing jobs and income.<br class=""><br class=""><object alt="page1image27373568" apple-inline="yes" id="5937076B-E7A7-41C7-99A5-E25ABB281042" class="" data="cid:44F6DB90-C814-4E97-BEC5-71AD8296FAD1" type="application/x-apple-msg-attachment" height="58" width="58" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes"></object> <object alt="page1image27371840" apple-inline="yes" id="D815C16C-E743-4E44-A9E6-B46DA296DA1E" class="" data="cid:A9EE46EB-EF35-4873-9784-7B9FF66AEC21" type="application/x-apple-msg-attachment" height="1" width="528" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes"></object><br class="">https://www.smh.com.au/national/bush-medicines-traditional-remedies-find-support-from-scientists-public-20210521-p57u1z.html Page 1 of 5<br class=""><br class="">Bush medicines: Traditional remedies find support from scientists, public 11/6/21, 1'48 pm<br class=""><br class=""><object alt="page2image20999552" apple-inline="yes" id="CF4A92A8-0F09-4959-97CE-ED95F5CD42F5" class="" data="cid:C2C8DA11-1B5E-4A2F-9242-0743983955A4" type="application/x-apple-msg-attachment" height="426" width="640" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes"></object><br class="">Pitjantjatjara woman Ngoi Ngoi Donald is a dialysis patient who visits Purple House for treatment. She also uses the Bush Rubs, made to a traditional recipe, for her arthritis. The bush rubs are made as a social enterprise, providing income to families that pick the leaves of the plants, jobs to those who now make it in a new commercial kitchen, and free rubs for patients. RHETT WYMAN<br class=""><br class="">Australian bush remedies include native mints used for colds and coughs, and gum from gum trees that provides tannin to treat burns. Long before colonial Australians called wattle “the emblem of our land”, it was used by Indigenous Australians to relieve rheumatic joints or ingested as a sedative.<br class=""><br class="">For elders being treated for kidney failure at Purple House, an Indigenous-run health care facility in Alice Springs, the smell and feel of bush remedies provides the comfort of millennia of grandmothers and mothers. It is like the chicken soup of the desert.<br class=""><br class="">When patients from Kintour and Kiwirrikurra started coming from remote homelands to Alice Springs for dialysis 20 years ago, they would bring plants to make medicines, said Sarah Brown, chief executive officer of Purple House.<br class=""><br class="">“They were all missing home,” said Ms Brown. “They all had stories to tell about making bush medicine or their mothers or grandmother making bush medicine. We realised there was a risk that they’d pass away and take this knowledge with them.”<br class=""><br class="">https://www.smh.com.au/national/bush-medicines-traditional-remedies-find-support-from-scientists-public-20210521-p57u1z.html Page 2 of 5<br class=""><br class="">Bush medicines: Traditional remedies find support from scientists, public 11/6/21, 1'48 pm<br class=""><br class=""><object alt="page3image20993312" apple-inline="yes" id="74517F10-0B83-49D9-85D6-268D4466C753" class="" data="cid:11DAE9DB-4750-4231-9CF4-288E76E9C1B2" type="application/x-apple-msg-attachment" height="426" width="640" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes"></object><br class="">Bush balms used to be made by pounding the leaves on this large stone found out in the bush. RHETT WYMAN<br class=""><br class="">What started 20 years ago with elders mixing up batches of bush remedies over a fire at Purple House is now a social enterprise called Bush Balm, which makes and sells balms and soothing lotions for beards, lips, skin, mothers and babies.<br class=""><br class="">Purple House has opened a new commercial kitchen and headquarters to meet growing demand, and hosts workshops on how to make healing balms from local native plants.<br class=""><br class="">Sales provide income to local Indigenous people who harvest the plants on Aboriginal lands, jobs for young people who are undergoing treatment for kidney failure, and cover the costs of providing free balms to patients undergoing dialysis at one of Purple House’s 18 remote locations.<br class=""><br class="">Pitjantjatjara woman Ngoi Ngoi Donald’s people traditionally harvested the leaves of plants back home to make remedies. Visiting Purple House for dialysis Ms Donald applied a rub made from the leaves of irmangka irmangka (Eremophila alternifolia) mixed with beeswax and olive oil to her arthritic hand, which she said helped.<br class=""><br class="">https://www.smh.com.au/national/bush-medicines-traditional-remedies-find-support-from-scientists-public-20210521-p57u1z.html Page 3 of 5<br class=""><br class="">Bush medicines: Traditional remedies find support from scientists, public 11/6/21, 1'48 pm<br class=""><br class=""><object alt="page4image20980256" apple-inline="yes" id="AC3AA3E0-2E29-484B-94FE-6849EFC94292" class="" data="cid:6597DAF9-9BB1-44B2-B3AC-9498B862E1FA" type="application/x-apple-msg-attachment" height="427" width="640" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes"></object><br class="">Bush Balm assistant manager Deanne Wano. Bush Balm was originally made by and for Indigenous dialysis patients at Purple House. It is now a social enterprise providing jobs to local Indigenous people who harvest the plants, work in the new kitchen and fuflfilment facility and provides free balm to patients undergoing dialysis. RHETT WYMAN<br class=""><br class="">Sales and popularity of traditional Aboriginal bush remedies are increasing across Australia as they gain more recognition from scientists and institutions.<br class=""><br class="">Last October the Imperial College’s Bioscience Review reported on traditional bush medicines, including Old Man’s Weed Gukwonderuk (Centipeda cunninghamii), which has been used by Victoria’s Wotjobaluk people to treat arthritis and joint pain. Extracts from this herb are also present in modern remedies, it reported. Another common plant remedy was the sap of the Native or Cherry Ballart (Exocarpas cupressiformis), used for snake bites.<br class=""><br class="">To avoid pregnancy, Indigenous women made a tea from boiling unripe Kangaroo Apple (Solanum aviculare). The same fruit is cultivated in Russia for use in commercial contraceptives.<br class=""><br class="">Dr Beth Gott, a 95-year-old ethno botanist from Monash University, has studied traditional Aboriginal medicines most of her life.<br class=""><br class="">In a guide to an exhibition on Australian Indigenous healing that toured the UK and Germany, Dr Gott wrote that saltbush was used to treat cuts and stings, banksias were used to purify water, and Hop bush (Dodonaea viscosa) was used to relieve the pain of tooth ache<br class=""><br class=""><object alt="page4image27273344" apple-inline="yes" id="ADA00C96-5A74-4E55-94D5-C2D1CCCEDC33" class="" data="cid:B504E81E-82A0-4E58-AE7F-0751FAE78795" type="application/x-apple-msg-attachment" height="1" width="203" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes"></object><br class="">https://www.smh.com.au/national/bush-medicines-traditional-remedies-find-support-from-scientists-public-20210521-p57u1z.html Page 4 of 5<br class=""><br class="">Bush medicines: Traditional remedies find support from scientists, public 11/6/21, 1'48 pm<br class=""><br class="">and cuts.<br class=""><br class="">Dr Jacqueline Healy, the director of museums with the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, said Australians often talk about Chinese medicines yet Aboriginal Australians had been making bush remedies for much longer. “I don’t know why we aren’t in awe of that,” she said.<br class=""><br class="">At Purple House, the rubs are seen as part of a holistic approach to treatment. Patients may apply them to their bodies but they can’t ingest any traditional medicines because of the risks of complications with conventional treatment.<br class=""><br class="">“People have been making them for thousands of years,” Purple House CEO Ms Brown said. “They weren’t going to go out and pick and use animal fat ... to make things that didn’t bloody work.”<br class=""><br class="">The market for bush remedies is expanding with new products and new vendors, Samoane Regattieri, the business manager of Aboriginal Bush Traders in Darwin, said.<br class=""><br class="">“I sell heaps of it,” she said of Purple House’s Bush Balms. Ms Regattieri said she couldn’t keep up with demand for products from Bush Medijina, made by Aboriginal women in Groote Eylandt.<br class=""><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div></div></div></div><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>