Bobby Budgeree – Medicine man

An Aboriginal Doctor

Bobby Budgeree was the medicine man of the tribe, and thus one of the great men. To attain that position he was tutored by the old men in the trying days of his initiation or man-making ceremonies and had to pass his medical examination according to aboriginal tests, before being, accepted as a qualified practitioner. Being a magician and a learned man, he enjoyed a good time. The ordinary tribesmen never wittingly incurred his animosity, but rather aimed to please, him, not because they loved him, but because the genius was regarded, more with awe than with reverence.  They had great faith in his skill and powers, but they feared him also when his services were needed. Their fate was in his hands. If the patient did not speedily improve with treatment, but got worse or merely lingered on, and so became a nuisance, he knew that the doctor’s pronouncement would give him quick despatch to the happy hunting grounds.

In such a case the doctor’s failure was attributed to the machinations of an enemy medicine man of another tribe. Once the patient got the idea that he would die, he simply gave up and died. White bushmen called that curious condition fatalism, and science termed it thanatomania.  Always when the treatment failed, and when a death occurred, the cause was laid against the hostile rivals, whose bewitching of the patient prevented the medicine man from curing him. His reputation as a learned physician, therefore, did not suffer.

He practiced some unusual methods when a complaint had got him in a corner. If a mysterious internal pain was not relieved by clay pills, infusions, or massaging, he resorted to the faith cure. He sucked the painful part, pretending to extract a stone, which he had previously placed in his mouth. The tribesmen believed in sorcery and magic; and, convinced that the cause of the pain had been removed, the sufferer’s simple faith was often effective. The marvelous thing was that he never questioned how the stone came out without leaving a hole.

Bobbie Budgeree, M.D. was a good bush herbalist. He had. a wonderful knowledge of native plants and herbal remedies, many of which were used by white settlers. In his wanderings, he was always searching for herbs, some of which were dried for gums, roots, stones, and pieces of quartz. From the quartz, he made his surgical instruments. His dispensary contained an unusual collection of vessels, tools, plants, seeds, bark, oils, drugs, and clay pills.

The pills were carefully compounded of soft clay and crude extract of herbs. The doctor’s laboratory was the fireside, where some essential ingredients were boiled or roasted, and some were chewed or crushed with stones, for there were pills of various sorts. The basic clay was kneaded on a sheet of bark and the learned apothecary rolled the little pellets with his fingers. Soft clay or stiff mud was used for many purposes with evident satisfaction. It was applied to bites and stings of insects, and as a plaster over cuts and spear wounds. The clay or mud was carefully chosen for the purpose, generally at the water’s edge of a creek, gully, or lagoon. In places, this natural plaster was impregnated with eucalyptus or other properties, according to the local vegetation, or there might be some mineral agency.
I have known bushmen who swore by it as the dinkum sting cure. When the proper mud was unobtainable a compress of earth and crushed gum leaves or gum bark was applied to flesh wounds. The Aboriginals were the first users of eucalyptus in the bush. They made poultices of the leaves, which in some cases were bruised and in others boiled. White men also used the leaves long before the commercial oils were known to them.

Particularly for complaints and rheumatism, many made their own ointment with boiled gum leaves and lard. A bed of green gum leaves was always prescribed as the most beneficial for anyone with back trouble. In serious cases, a shallow pit was dug, and the bottom was covered with hot coals. It was then filled up with green gum leaves, and the patient reclined with his bareback over the steaming heap. The heat sweated the cold out of him, and the body absorbed the eucalyptus at the same time. Many a lame back was cured by that treatment, but care had to be taken to avoid chills. The steam was also inhaled for headaches. For poultices, the leaves were partly boiled and put on as hot as the patient could bear them. Green gum leaves, bruised with stones or pulped by chewing, were bound over wounds to heal them. For colds and other sicknesses, the leaves again came into use, a tea being brewed from a few of them and drunk in small doses. Places, where gum trees grew in profusion, were generally regarded as healthy, yet most new settlers were in a hurry to ringbark and burn off all the trees around them.

A Bush Medicine Man

I saw Dr. Budgeree applying the steam cure to little Tommy Tarbot, who had a severe attack of influenza. A pit, five feet in length and 18 inches deep, was dug near the patient’s gunyah and a fire kept burning in it till the excavation was sufficiently hot. It ‘was then cleaned out. Next, a bed of pine leaves, a foot deep was trampled in, and covered with a possum rug. On that the sufferer was placed full length; covered with another rug, and finally buried under the sand. Only his frightened face was visible. Beads of perspiration were soon oozing from it, and Tommy’s saucer-like eyes rolled from side to side, more from fear of the specialist than from anything else. Bobby sat beside him, wiping the sweat off his face till he was steamed enough.

Then he was disinterred, well dried, and tucked in bed away from draughts. He. soon recovered. Sometimes the pit. was used as a dentist’s chair. The victim was buried to the chin, and the tooth was knocked out by placing a pointed stone instrument against and striking smartly with a mallet. Teeth were not extracted painlessly, but there was never any bother in that dental chair.

The steaming process was also adopted for rheumatic ailments. Goanna oil was another specific for rheumatism, colds on the chest, stiffness, and body soreness, but for these, too, gum leaves and gum-leaf beds were ordered. Other remedies for rheumatism and for swellings was lotion made by boiling wild clematis leaves for two or three hours. This was also used with satisfactory results by settlers.

The white men got relief in many ways, from Bobby Budgeree’s’ prescription. Powdered charcoal of the silky oak was requisitioned as a styptic, and young tea-tree shoots were first applied to cuts and spear wounds to relieve the pain. The ashes of certain weeds were employed both to stop bleeding and for healing. Alkaline wood ash was generally sprinkled on an ulcer. When Bobby burnt it at his camp, the fire served a double purpose, but roasting meats on it was barred.

The cunjevoi lily which grew abundantly along the river banks was excellent for cuts and boils. Many white bushmen declared that there was nothing better for a boil than cunjevoi. The aborigines further used it as food, to poison his spearheads, and for treating muscular rheumatism. The leaf, warmed over a fire, was reckoned a magic pain banisher and healer when applied to scalds and burns. The lily’s beautiful flower was a trap for the inexperienced. If an unwashed hand came into contact with lips after touching a flower then the result was an agonising, burning pain that lasted for a considerable time. The beauty of the plant once led me to grow a bunch in the garden, but I got into so much trouble through children fingering the bloom that I had to cut it down.

Wild strawberry vines (a prickly creeper, which some called red currant were boiled for dysentery, and bloodwood gum and the wine coloured water from a wild apple tree.; (Angophpra) never failed as a laxative. A decoction of wild mint was recommended as a cough cure and the addition of wild lavender was used as an aperient. Water in which the reddish leaves of young gums were steeped combined, the qualities of a mouth wash and hair tonic. It cleaned the scalp and made the hair delightfully soft and glossy. Bobby Budgeree was always studying plants. Whenever he came upon anything special in his company, he would mention what it was good for or warn us of some harmful property. The sap of the bracken fern; was excellent for stings but the best antidote for the blistering sting of the stinging tree was the juice of that same tree. The common thistle was used as a vegetable to keep children free of skin eruptions, pimples, and blood disorders. It was also alleged to be a cure for growths and cancer. Pennyroyal leaves, placed in the bunk, got rid of fleas, and fennel, a common coastal weed, distributed about the  (bush hut), kept away mosquitoes, flies, fleas, and ants.

Bobby understood the curative properties of dozens of plants and seeds, some of which were baked, some boiled, and others chewed. He had also other remedies. An aching head was tightly bandaged, with a fresh, warm, opossum skin. If that was not available, or. if it failed, a piece of charcoal was chewed and swallowed. The charcoal, it was said, acted by absorbing gases in the stomach. For nerves, a tonic I made of crushed green ants and water was prescribed It was used too, as a pick-me-up when regaling with intoxicants.

Bobby was once called upon to render first-aid to a teamster whose leg was broken. He set the limb and bound it up in bark splints cut from a branch the same size as the leg. Before he strapped them on he held them over a fire, which made them curl together neatly around the injured limb. Tommy Tarbot’s s pet calamity was snakebite. Some natives were fishing in the river, and Tommy was hunting the crickets and grasshoppers when he was bitten on the leg by a black snake. He rushed down to Bobby Budgeree, calling out his trouble as he ran. Bobby promptly dumped him in a running stream and quickly washed the surface of the wound. He said a portion of the venom always lodged upon the surface round the punctures, and if that were washed off quickly there was much less risk of serious results. When he had a case to. treat away from water, he got his dog to lick the bitten part.

After washing Tommy’s leg he made a deep incision and then pinched and sucked the wound. While he was thus engaged a woman procured some liquid bloodwood gum. With that Bobby dressed the wound and tied it up with a rag. No ligatures were used. About an hour after he was bitten, Tommy was hunting unconcernedly for more grasshoppers.  Though Bobby was the specially authorised practitioner in the group that he belonged to, the properties of plants and seeds, oils and berries, and the common herbal remedies in use, were known to all. But they knew nothing of the sorcery and magic by which Bobby Budgeree performed miracles. That bit was Bobby’s method of faith healing when the case perplexed him or defied his simple means of treating it, and faith at times worked wonders. —

E. S. Sorenson in The Australasian.