Buddha Wood Oil – essentially Australian

23 March 2022

It was the indigenous inhabitants (Aborigines) of Australia who first discovered and applied the remarkable qualities of Buddha Wood (also known as Desert Rose) thousands of years prior to white settlement.

Buddha Wood Oil produced by Wild Wood Oils of Australia is dark, copper red in colour. It is an opaque, viscous oil with a medium intensity woody fragrance. It is further characterized by an herbaceous sustaining and spicy back note. The taste is bitter.

The oil is extracted from the wood and bark of the Buddha Wood Tree (native to Australia) using steam distillation.

Genesis

It was the indigenous inhabitants (Aborigines) of Australia who first discovered and applied the remarkable qualities of Buddha Wood (also known as Desert Rose) thousands of years prior to white settlement.

Used for ceremonial cleansing or initiation and known for its beautiful scent, its antibacterial properties and therapeutic nature are believed to be stimulating to the immune system and the Australian natives prized it for its analgesic effects.

As a distilled product, the oil continues to exude extraordinary benefits. It is calming and grounding and is the perfect addition to meditation oil or as a base note to perfume due to its earthy, woody and herbaceous scent.

It also has application to skincare and essential oil blends.

Buddha Wood exudes the very properties of its environment; the drylands of Australia.

As a little-known plant to the western world, this small resinous and invasive tree is steam distilled to extract the finest smoky essence, blending seamlessly in variety of mediums.

Sustainability

Every step of the way, Buddha Wood from the Wild Wood Oils company is ethically sourced, harvested, distilled and distributed keeping the fragile Australian ecology in front of mind for future generations while honouring the wisdom of the past.

Wild Wood Oils work closely with primary producers to encourage the development of a sustainable resource capable of meeting our production requirements.

Our timber raw material is selected from our growers located in the arid regions of Australia.

Located in the Flinders Ranges region of Southern Australia for many years, Wild Wood Oils has created strong relationships with local timber plantation and land owners, in South Australia. However, to minimize impact we also source timber from growers interstate in New South Wales and Queensland.

In a country as vast as Australia, the natural environment is abundant with raw material.

It’s a place of vivid and infinite scenery. Sunlight radiates from clear blue skies baking the landscape during daytime, and revealing a carpet of twinkling stars with unimaginable clarity and detail at night.

Seemingly uninhabited, the region is a zoo of native wildlife including the remarkable Australian Kangaroo. Hidden from the hot sun during the day, they emerge in the cool of evening ready for their nightly foraging and nocturnal bounding.

In Australia, we call this “The Outback.”

Amongst this picturesque environment, Wild Wood Oils undertakes sustainable harvesting of natural timbers. This is where we distill the essence of Wild Wood Oils.

Buddha Wood Tree

Eromophila mitchelli is found in the arid regions of tropical and sub-tropical Australia amongst native scrub in South Australia, Northern New South Wales and Queensland.

Depending on climate and soil types, Buddha Wood trees typically range in height from 3 metres to as high as 8 metres.

An evergreen and often resinous shrub to small tree, its foliage comprises glossy bright green broomlike leaves and white or mauve bell shaped fragrant flowers. The tree exudes a woody aromatic scent hinting at the oil contained within the woody trunk, bark and branches.

Australia’s early settlers were introduced to the Buddha Wood’s oily fragrance by its aboriginal inhabitants and since that time have harvested and extracted the unique oil.

The tree was discovered by Sir Thomas Mitchell who led an expedition to Australia in 1831 hence the full botanical name “Eremophilla Mitchelli.”

In early years, the essential oil and timber were exported to Asian countries for use in aroma therapies and perfumery.

Wild Wood Oils

Andrew and Dianne Correll, directors of Wild Wood Oils of Australia, have worked with and developed their Buddha Wood oil to its current marketable stage, over the last decade.

Andy Correll explains “To obtain the unique characteristics of our oil has taken many years of painstaking research.”

To the uninitiated, the process would appear remarkably simple however, to ensure consistent production between batches and the evolving of its unique qualities requires more than just simple steam distillation; there are many proprietary components to our method.

The couple have worked together for over ten years tending to all facets of development from ‘branch to bottle’ and producing Buddha Wood Oil as their signature product.