Emu Apple: Barnarr
Bush Medicine
Marble tree. Owenia vernicosa. The bark of this tree is great for healing cuts and the fruit for healing boils. The fruit is food for the emu, but not good to eat for the people. However eating the emu provides the fruit medicine for the people. In this way the emu and emu apple work together to provide medicine for the people. Yidumduma identified Petalostigma Pubescens in the Jawoyn Plant & Animals book (p99) also as emu apple.
• Transcript
now
this one here what we call a bunner
one of the tree yeah you got some fruit
up top there
but i’ll pull some fruit down after you
can have a look
and i watch this for we usually
for all the medicine yeah one of the
other big cuts
to bark off this very very strong
when you boil it here’s a big cut
pulls all the meat and everything
together
with this bark but i’ll just trim this
back off first and you can have a look
it’s very easily sit down and i guess
take a piece off
very red
now uh when i take the bark off you can
see the
pure red color in there
that’s a part of the very strong
medicine
you can see how that red color come off
here red see i’ll just trim them off
see how when you get them out
that’s the roll of medicine in there in
the wood
see the red pit
and i’ll cut them off like this and i’ll
cut some more
see how red is jesus that’s beautiful
red
medicine that’s the best medicine
in the country one hour
very big cut from anything
even if you fall off the cliff or you
got a big fat cut in your feet
or you might have fell off and the sharp
stick can have a big
big hole in your body and your leg
whatever
this is the best medicine ever seen
just for us someone was struggling to
move around because the leg will swell
and everything and then what did you do
go down get the bark off this
make a fire and then crush it all up
like this
and when i used to crush it up like this
and then maybe
when they crush it up it was make it
more soft
easy to boil quick you know
when it was nice and soft you’ll see the
water just come out all red
you come out really red the water will
be red
and then then use the base it
base it to where the cuts were
then they uh and this sort of took all
the paint away
from his cut way out you know
uh you can put it in like this
didn’t take long to cure that big cut
overnight you sort of pull all the meats
together
i think when you base it then they uh
you must have a very big pain
probably 15 minutes the wall of pain
will go away
because this will burn some
the pain the the saw
you know then take the pain away and
then he’d be
feeling real good even if he had a
feet swollen up you know in another word
you call it like a high blood pressure
going up
but this one will release all of all the
joints
and all of what we call a string in
aboriginal way but all the chinua
genu and all the muscles all the blood
circulation
and all them you know and then he’ll
bring it and bring it back to normal
and then they uh if you went to sleep
overnight uh wake up next morning you
didn’t hear any sound of him from
grounding or twisting a lot like we
watched before
and this one will shut up bring him back
and i hit up a
decent sleep and he wake up next morning
he can eat good breakfast before then
when he had the pain and everything he
couldn’t eat at all
in the past while bringing out a lot of
initiation from the trouble mark you
know
and after the cut they use a water off
this too
to stop them from getting pain and itchy
you know and then they get healed up
properly
that’s from bonner bark now
and i’ll get that fruit there but we
can’t eat that fruit because you saw
brackets because it’s a medicine
it’s sort of strong you know to eat
but all in you you can eat that
you know you can eat that old apple
because that’s part of the fruit
but for us we can’t eat him but when we
kill
emu to eat because he’s already eating
this stuff here
the meat itself has have a lot of
fertilizer adding from
to him apple we can eat that and that’s
putting the medicine in our body too
also when we eat the whole
olympia you know and that’s we’re
working together with
with the hemi apple then i’ll get that
little nut there and then you’re gonna
have a look when i open it up here you
know i’ll just open up one and have a
look
that’s a really medicine item green one
they had very good strong
medicine but if you boil it in the water
it’s different in a different
pot this little green one
this little green one used to boil it
separate
it was good for boil you know you had a
bad boil in your
knee or your hip wall wherever you’re at
and then you can go ahead and baste it
with this one with the red one that
and when you’re bathing with that and
that was really number one
that’s the best the best medicine for
the big cuts and boil
this banana yeah you know
i see in the bush we’re gonna have a cut
we can look around find the trees
and we can get it affectionate no need
to go down to the hospital
you know if you’re close to the hospital
yes go to hospital
but here in the bush we can come up and
get this we come to get banner
and they sit there
foreign