Warumungu

This grows in wet country, around soakages. The bark is used to line coolamons for babies to sleep in. It was also used to makes sheaths for stone knifes with resin handles.

This grows in rock country. When the fruit is ripe, the tree smells very strong and you can eat the fruit skin, seeds and all. If the fruit is unripe and hard, you dig the ground and put them in a hole about half a metre deep. Put earth on top, and some water to harden the surface and make it straight, and then put a blanket over that. Leave it for at least a week. When you smell a sweet smell, the fruit is ripe and you dig them out. They are nice and soft and they taste sweet. You can eat the skin, seeds and all. When the fruit is dry and falls off the tree, we pick them up and take them home. You can take them on long travels. We soak them in water and eat them all. They are very filling, and make you full when you have no bread. You can also eat the gum from parnttarli, and use the roots and bark for bush medicine. We scrape the roots and bark with a knife, put them in water and boil them. We use this to wash sores and makes them clean.

Ngurrku can be used as a herb, a bush medicine or protective covering. The bark is used to treat sores and blind boils. You get the bark and boil it. It makes the water go red, but if you leave it for a couple of hours it goes purplish black and the medicine is stronger. You put it in the bathtub with hot water, and soak the child or adult. They should sit in the bath for a long time. You can also boil the him, likkarr, and use it for sores. You can use the leaves as a herb for cooking in a ground oven. When cookng bush turkey or porcupine, collect snappy gum leaves and put them into the hole over the hot coals. Straight away put the kuyu (meat) in and cover it quickly before the smell of herbs comes out. Ngurrku leaves and oher eucalypt leaves are also used to cover water in a water carrier, to stop it from splashing, or to rest cooked or uncooked meat on, to keep it off the ground.

There are two kinds of bush bananas: minyngarna are long while ngamukurtu are short and round. Ngamukurtu grow in the sand country, in swamps and mulga country. Minyngarna grow along creeks. We eat the fruit and we also eat the ngamukurtu leaves.

This grows on plains. When the first rains come, we pull the young ngutila from the trees fresh and cook them in the hot ashes. They are too sticky to eat raw. Two months later we get old beans and break them and eat them straight. Later we spread a blanket under the tree, shake the tree so that dry seeds fall down. We pick them up and take them home. We clean them, put them into a coolamon, grind them and put them in water. Then we drink that water. Or we use it to wash our hair to make it grow straight and long. Sometimes we rub the water on sick babies.

Ngamari grows all year round on trees like kalkkarti (soap brush) and kunjumarra (river red gum). You get the berries, which are green to yellow, and suck the juice out. You chew them like bubble-gum - they taste sweet and sour together. You spit out the seeds which are quite sticky.

Ngajarrma are similar to bush potatoes. They grow along the side of creeks. We dig up the ground to get the yam out. When we see the yam, we get it and eat it raw. You can also eat it cooked - you cook it in hot coals and cover it with the hot earth.

Mulurr grows in many places. It's used for smoking babies and sick people. You find yakkula (spinifex resin) on the ground at the roots of the spinifex grass and smash it into smallish pieces. Break off a bunch of mulurr where the young leaves are green and shiny and collect some old dry twigs too. Dig a small deep hole in the ground, about 20 cm wide and about the same deep. You put some dry mulurr twigs and grass on top of them. Then you put in the yakkula and light it on fire in the hole. You put some oil on the baby's body. When the fire has died down a bit, you put the fresh mulurr on the fire and hold the baby over the smoke, moving the baby around. Or else you put a blanket quickly over the hole, and quickly move the blanket so the smoke gets on the baby or sick person. This makes them strong. You can also take the young leaves and boil them up and over. The water changes the red colour. You ue this to wash people who have sores or itching, scabies or impetigo. You can also get white witchetty grubs from the roots.

Maanjani climbs up trees. It's used for tying things. You tie it around your head if you have a headache, or use it as a bandage if you have a cut or you've been bitten by a snake, to stop the poison.

When the bush potato flower turns to cotton and fly in the air like cobwebs, you know it's time to dig for the manaji. It's a lot of hard work digging up a bush potato, but worth the effort as they are delicious when cooked in hot coals out in the bush. The plant is a trailing vine with heart-shaped leaves and purple flowers. You look for a crack in the ground to know if the tuber is big enough to dig for. If you see the crack, start digging. A crow bar is a useful tool as the soil is so hard, but also because if you thump the ground and hear a hallow sound, that is where the tuber will be. Brush off the dirt and bury the bush potato in the coals of the fire until you smell that it's cooked (you can wrap it in foil if you don't like the charcoal).