Polly Ngale

These sweet, rich dark purple berries only grow on the plant (Carissa lanceolata) for a couple of weeks throughout the year, but Polly’s people collect plenty of them and store them dry, immersing them in water again before being eaten. The plant of the conkerberry is a tangled, spiny shrub that can grow up to two metres high. This plant also bears medicinal properties. The orange inner bark from the roots can be soaked in water and the product of that process, is a solution that can be used as a type of medicinal wash. This is particularly favoured for skin and eye conditions. The thorns on the shrub also have curative properties. The green bush produces fragrant white flowers, then the tiny green berries ripen and grow, changing colour over weeks from light green to pink and browns to yellow, to shades of red and purple when they finally ripen. The fruit looks very similar to a plum and is often referred to in English by Polly as a ‘bush plum’. During the Dreamtime, winds came from all directions, carrying the anwekety seed over Polly’s ancestors’ land. The anwekety of the Dreamings then propagated, bore fruit and dropped more seeds. Many winds blew the seeds all over the Dreaming lands. Ceremonies are held in honour of anwekety in which bodies are anointed with emu oil, then ochre paint; singing and dancing follow, ensuring that the sweet wild plum fruit will continue to feed the Anmatyerre people at Utopia.