NT bush tea reaches Asian shelves as Garawa growers scale up kulbanyi export

A native “bush tea” harvested at Garawa-run Seven Emu Station in the Northern Territory is being exported to Asia, with Traditional Owners and partners hoping the product can create steady income while keeping cultural knowledge and value on Country.

Kulbanyi tea is made from the leaves of wild paperbark trees on the 400,000-hectare coastal cattle station near the Gulf of Carpentaria, 900 kilometres south-east of Darwin. Garawa man Frank Shadforth, who runs the station with his family, told the ABC the plant has long been part of local healing practices. “The old people used to use it for medicine, chest pain, cold and flu” he said. The idea to produce a tea came from watching others drink commercial blends while he had useful plants growing nearby.

The Shadforth family now harvests kulbanyi leaves, hangs them to dry outdoors and processes them at the homestead. Production is still small (about 100 kilograms a year) but demand is expanding beyond Australia. Recent shipments have gone to Japan, Korea and China, where buyers are exploring the tea as a premium beverage and as an ingredient in other products.

An Indigenous-owned Brisbane company, FigJam and Co, has been working with Seven Emu Station on packaging and distribution. FigJam’s head of strategy, Jacob Davidson, said the arrangement kept profits within the community because harvesting and processing were conducted entirely on Seven Emu Station. “A lot of producers or Indigenous landowners have the ability to produce bush food, but would have to send it off in either raw form or in partially manufactured forms,” Mr Davidson said.

He said the tea’s characteristics set it apart from many commercial blends. “The one thing that makes kulbanyi tea quite different is that it can be steeped [soaked] multiple times” he said, adding that the flavour shifts with each infusion – a clean, crisp eucalypt taste on the first steep, a darker citrus and chrysanthemum flavour on the second, and a strong pine needle profile on the third before settling into a clean, earthy finish.

Supporters of the venture say export interest shows how quickly Australia’s native food and botanical products can move from local use to global markets. But they also stress that growth needs to be managed carefully, with Traditional Owners in control of how the product is harvested, described and sold.

For Seven Emu Station, the goal is to build a reliable, culturally grounded enterprise alongside cattle operations – one that turns a plant used for generations into a modern product without losing the story that gives it meaning. As kulbanyi tea reaches new shelves overseas, Mr Shadforth said the work remains rooted in the same place it always has: the country where the trees grow, and the knowledge that has been passed down to use them.