Ethno-botanist Peter Latz comes to spend a day and night with us. In a way he seems to embody the figure of the aussie bushie, long beard, weathered face with sparkle eyes, laconic humour frequently drifting into jiggy jiggy sauciness.

Brought up on Hermannsburg Mission he is a native Arrente speaker, and i think must be initiated as he talks about participating in various Aboriginal ceremonies.

He takes us on a short walk, starting in the riverbed west of the camp, then up to the base of the rocky hills to the north. We only travel a few hundred metres, but he has introduced us to a wealth of plants used traditionally as medicine and food.

Mints, lemon grass, the needles of a pine tree which are placed in a shallow body length hole for a cold sufferer to rest in, absorbing the healing properties through the skin, ruby sap from the 'pharmacy tree' for cleaning and sealing cuts, wattle seeds to be toasted in their pods, bush tomotoes, bush onions, the desert cornucopia overflows for us whitefellas who had maybe previously just seen grasses and flowers.

technology of grubs

totem