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Catalogue Number: 25/401
This painting is about the bush medicine plant that grows wild on dry rocky land in Central Australia. After a big rain the leaves turn green and Aboriginal women living in remote communities go out and collect the leaves. The plant has tiny pale yellow flowers and a special smell and helps the women find it. The leaves are crushed and can be boiled in water to make healing medicine for pain, skin irritations, coughs, colds and flu. The small curved shapes in the painting represent the women sitting on the ground and a coolamon which is a wooden bowl used in the old days to carry bush tuckers.
Aboriginal families have been using this plant to heal themselves for generations.