Steve Hopper

They are fundamental construction items for creation of all we know.

The preface in the book was written by a good friend of mine, Doc Reynolds, who's a Noongar from Esperance, and he gives an account of being a kid sleeping by open fireplaces in the open air and rolling on it while he was asleep and burning his arm.

And his mum and dad immediately found a nearby eucalypt, grabbed the young foliage and made a poultice and put it on the burn.

That eased the pain and healed him to the point where, as an adult, there is no scar at all where he was badly burnt.

That's just indicative of eucalyptus oil and its antibacterial, antiviral characteristics.

You know, eucalypt oil is now in many modern products and there's more of it grown in plantations for oil in China than there is in Australia.

Another example is one of the trees I'm looking at out the window at the moment, the Eucalyptus cornuta.

The bark of that was made into ash and when young babies were born, they were covered in this ash.

That was deliberate as a way of connecting the young child to budger, to country and important trees.

But also the bark has antibacterial, antiviral properties.

So it was left on the kid even before their father saw them.

They were introduced to eucalypts first.

That's been a wonderful journey because, you know, it's very controversial, particularly the scale of prescribed burning that's happening in the high rainfall forests

The Noongars use what we call an approach that's focused on precision burning.

So fire is applied, but with great precision.

And it's applied in very small doses at highly specific times of the year and as a celebration of the family and the community.

Everyone's barefoot.

The elders are there, you know, the immobile elders even.

The kids are running around.

They're part of the process.