Tripping the Simpson Desert

[Torsten]

It has been an intense week for me. I left Mullumbimby on tuesday afternoon, drove 700k's to Roma where I stayed overnight and then another 1000k's the next day (incl 300 on dirt). This took me though the diamantina and to the edge of the simpson desert. Day 3 I headed off road into the gibber plains and sanddunes. I hadn't even reached my destination and I was already overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape and the experiences along the way.

My first stop was on a huge gibber plain and as I looked down I realised that all this speculation about aboriginal dot paintings being derived from tryptamine visuals was irrelevant. There are few features more artistically and culturally inspiring than the polished gibber itself. I will be putting up a page of these impressions in the next few days.

It was my first time 4WDing on deep sand and it took me a little while to work out how to get over the huge dunes, but eventually I worked it out and got a real kick out of it (especially the ones with a sheer drop on the other side ). I headed straight to the coordinates I was given for a pituri patch to i could familiarise myself with the habitat and the plant itself. The plants put on a real show being in full bloom. Again, I will be putting up the pics on another page soon.

After freezing my nuts off in a -7deg C rated sleeping bag (gosh it gets cold out there) I spent much of the next day exploring the area with its diverse vegetation. A little rain in May provided enough moisture for many wildflowers and some shrubby regrowth. I collected some branches of Acacia ligulata for making pituri ash and headed off to another set of pituri coordinates. Sadly the plants at this location had not survived a fire from a couple of years ago and as the day (and my stay) was coming to an end I decided to simply explore this sanddune some more. I don't know how long these dunes are, but I travelled alongside some of them for over 100km's. They may well be much longer than that though as I could not see an end on either side. After travelling quite a few k's and running up these huge dunes every few minutes I finally found another pituri bush. 6 of them to be specific, but they were all interconnected by one rootsystem. I harvested some material, took some pics and spent another couple of hours doing some other research on them. The sun was setting and it was time to head home. Two flat tyres later I got back to a locality.

Next day I again drove through the diamantina, stopping off whenever I saw an interesting plant. I found a creeper that looks much like a desmodium. I also saw an Ipomoea, which I don't know what species it is (no flowers). Being in the diamantina it may well be I.diamantinensis. A little further I found some native tobacco - still need to key this one out. I also collected lots of acacia samples for TLC testing and various aromatic plants.

This has been an amazing trip and well worth the exhausting travel. It was organised on a non-profit basis and with full confidentiality, so I am sorry, but I cannot provide location details, coordinates, or herb for sale. I will however offer some herb for free (SASE) in the next week or two once I know how much I have.

Thanks to everyone who helped me get this organised!! And thanks to all SAB customers for being patient about the order backlog my absence has created

I will link the pictorial for this trip from this thread once it is finished.

[ 23. August 2004, 14:24: Message edited by: Torsten ]

[strangebrew]

Sounds like a cool and productive time was had. Hanging for the photos.

If they're not up for a while I'll forgive ya.

[Ed Dunkel]

It's nice to have a great travel story on this forum for once. An excellent little travel tale.

Hope there will be some good research coming out of this, new acacia analysis, to see the pictures of the trip and will there be any pituri cultivation info from your observations?

Can't wait..

[Torsten]

Originally posted by Ed Dunkel:

It's nice to have a great travel story on this forum for once.

Actually, it was the fact that we've had a few inspiring ethnobotanical travel tales in the last few weeks that led me to the decision to document the whole trip rather than just the single object that was the cause of it. Due to some confidentiality issues it won't be as precise as Jack's recent Fiji post, but it will certainly be a very 'stereotypical' australian adventure story (kinda funny to think that even though this is the real image of australia, not many aussies have actually been there).

[gomaos]

well you've proven it:

where there's a will there's a way...

mind over matter...

all this gibber about pituri being impossible to be found...

you went out there and found those plants...

so it can be done!

Good work!

[hebrew]

good one torsten

i love the desert

it is a truly amazing place

can't wait to see the photos

[Fractalhead]

Sounds like a great adventure Torsten!

While on the topic of D. hopwoodii... Is there any obvious subjective difference between the effects of nicotine and nor-nicotine? I recently tried smoking a sample of WA D. hopwoodii and felt a really obvious nicotine-type feeling quite indistinguishable from normal tobacco (nicotine). I did notice an absence of some character that was present in the effects of Henrys' material. Henry's seemed to have a deeper, darker and longer lasting feel but this may have been all psychological given that I knew the origins of the different materials. I'm hoping to obtain MS data on this WA stuff soon.

[Torsten]

I don't know about the differences, but I hypothesise that nornicotine doesn't unleash it's nastiness until you get to high doses. And hence the attraction of pituri as a ceremonial sacrament relies on high doses I would think that this is where the only problem would occur. Hence, it seems OK to consume the other chemotypes for low dose effects like stimulation etc.

[t st tantra]

i agree with you fractal about the effects of the eb pituri,i smoke it about 50/50 with tobacco and dont even notice the tobacco in terms of taste or effect.i think the effect is closer to the tropanes.the persistence of the effect could be useful for treatment of smoking addiction,unlike tobacco you dont need another hit for a considerable time.

it seems to have some analgesic properties too,i wonder if that was part of the reason for its popularity?

t s t .

[Torsten]

Originally posted by t st tantra:

i think the effect is closer to the tropanes.

Ummm, I have consumed a lot of tropanes and a lot of nicotine and I cannot see much similarity between pituri and tropanes. Mind you, I don not smoke and virtually all my nicotine experiments have been oral. I agree that pituri has something more than just nicotine, but it is certainly not dominant.

Tantra, don't know if you are a smoker, but if so, it could be that you don't appreciate the pituri effects in full clarity due to a nicotine tolerance (ie you need to smoke more than a non-smoker to get a good effect and by this stage the tropane effect becomes more noticable).

it seems to have some analgesic properties too,i wonder if that was part of the reason for its popularity?

This is where much of my pharmacological interest is focused. High dose nicotine (from N.tabacum) does not have any appreciable analgesia even at levels high enough to pass out on. Pituri however seems to have this according to traditional use (well, you better hope it does, or slicing into your penis might be even more heroic) and also extrapolated from personal lower dose experiments.

I really think the magic of pituri lies in its high dose, and maybe there is a traditional entheogen in australia after all.