Transcript

I just saw a Stringybark tree. Why don't we go and have a look at it and I can tell you some things about it.

So what you can see here is a Stringybark tree and for our people, there's multiple uses for it. So the much straighter trees, you can use them to make canoes but you can also use the bark to put on our shelters as well. So if our people lived in a gunyah which is a frame made of branches, our people used to get the bark and put it on the sides so there is a roof to keep us dry during, you know, rainy seasons or you can even put them up against shelters as walls and that will protect us from strong winds and rain as well.

But if you go in just behind the bark itself, you'll find fine fibres which you can use to make rope and string with. So our people would get that fibre and they would roll it either on their leg or in their hands to make those fibres turn into string or rope, or we could use those fibres as well to make fire. So our people would get those fibres roll around in their hand in a circular motion, put that on the base, you put the stem of the grass tree in the centre of it and rub that grass tree stem until they got friction and hopefully a spark from that. That would then ignite, you know, the fibres that you can obtain from this tree.

So what we might do now, we might move on a little bit further on and see what else we can find.

Oh this looks interesting as well. So what we have here is a tree and trees like this one, this particular species often bleed. They produce what you call gum. So if you have a look in there you just see that gum starting to form there. So when it first comes out of the tree its soft and then after a while it goes quite hard. But when it does go hard that's a good thing for us because there's a medicinal use for that for us.

So when it does go hard we can get some of these gums and we can actually crush them in our hands, around the centre of your hand there and if you've got a sore tooth some of these gums you can actually put it on the sore tooth and it acts like an antiseptic. So we can either clean it and it can also numb the pain as well.

Okay, so what we might do is move on a little bit further. I thought this would be a good one to talk about because of its medicinal use but let's go a bit further on and see what else we can find.

I just found something very interesting here. What we have here is a straighter version of a Stringybark tree and when we have trees like this, this one's in pristine condition, there's great potential to make canoes. We have two names for a canoe in our culture. It can be either called a nawi or a mudgerra. These canoes are very special for us because they are used constantly to acquire fish from our waterways.

What we might do now, we might move on a little bit further but what I want to do is also talk to you about the sorts of tools and sorts of instruments we can make from the natural resources we've just spoken about.

So we're just going to go off the track a little bit here and we're going to look at a paper bark tree. So paper bark trees provide us with very useful resources as well.

So I got here an example, we just saw this, of some paperback that's come off the tree and we can use that for actually cooking fish in. So you can put your fish in the bark here but you need to wet the bark first and make it pliable and then you just wrap your fish up in here. You can use some string that you might make from natural resources to bound it. Just put it in the coals and just cover it with some coals and just let it cook inside the bark. So by the time the wet back is burnt through, the fish should be, you know, very well steamed and perfectly cooked. You wouldn't throw it in a flame because the flame would just burn it immediately. So cooking successfully in the ground is about being patient and allowing, you know, your meals to cook slowly, not quickly.

So the paperback can also be used for flooring for our shelters as well so for our gunyahs. You know, you would just lay the back down like this and that would create like carpet, you know, for your dwelling.

So we might just move on now and there's one more natural resource I'd like to speak to you about.

Come on let's go.

So I'd like to finish off our excursion now by talking about two more plants. So here we have a Lomandra and this plant serves two purposes for us. We can select a particular leaf from it. Now as you can see this leaf here has a white tip so that’s come from the centre of the plant. And at times if you're walking through the bush and you become quite thirsty you can actually chew the tip of this. It helps quench your thirst. But one of the most important purposes of this plant is that it can provide us with bush food as well. So if have a look just here you'll see the seeds of this plant. They're yellow and they look a little bit like rice. So what we would do, we would take this away from the plant itself and allow it to dry and then we would just crush it with a grinding stone, which I'll show you later on, to make a flour and then we would add a bit of water with that to make our bush bread.

But if you really wanted to do something additional with this plant you could make a little bangle with it. So if you select a leaf that's, you know, quite broad, you can tear it into three sections, you tie it at the end and you can just simply plait it. So you can actually make bangles with this or necklaces, but it's also a very quick way of making rope for binding the frame of your gunyahs together. So you remember the gunyahs that I spoke about. They're made with branches, a wooden frame. If there's bad weather approaching and you need to construct a gunyah really quickly, we can use this as rope to bind that frame together. So it's just a matter of being able to plait the three strips together.

So there's just one final plant I'd like to talk about now. This one's important to us as well because there's medicinal properties. It's better known as the Tea tree. As you know you can go to a chemist and buy tea tree oil, can't you? So with open wounds, what our people would do, they would get a big clump of that tree, they that would break the branches off, they would give it a light bashing with a stone and then hold, you know, the branches over hot coals and they would rub that on the open wound. So it's more like an antiseptic rather than a cure for that wound. So it's a very effective way of actually cleaning open wounds. There's also some strong parts of the tree you can actually make prongs out for your spears as well.

So what we might do now, we might go into the classroom and I'll have a talk to you about some of the items we can make from these natural resources.

End of transcript.