A Quiet Season, and What Has Been Growing Behind the Scenes

August 19, 2026

As we move into Guling (Orchard Season), Country begins to shift again.

The first signs of renewal are often small. Wattles begin to flower, orchids start emerging and the landscape slowly changes as winter begins to ease.

It feels like a fitting time for Ganbu Country to become a little more visible again too.

If you’ve followed us for a while, you may have noticed that I’ve been fairly quiet online and largely away from markets.

Life changed quite significantly for me when I stepped into a new role as a kinship carer, and much of my energy has gone into settling into that role, finding a new family rhythm and learning how to balance caring responsibilities with Country, work and running a small business.

I’m still learning how to juggle all of it.

But Ganbu Country never really stopped.

While things became quieter publicly, behind the scenes I found myself returning to some of the parts of this work I love most.

Walking Country. Working with plants. Researching. Formulating. Testing. Learning.

And slowly, a new chapter of Ganbu Country Skincare has been taking shape.

The quiet work

Having some distance from the pressure to constantly post, prepare for markets or always have something new to announce gave me room to think more deeply about what I actually want Ganbu Country products to be.

Not just what they look like on a shelf, but what sits behind them.

Why does a particular botanical belong in a formulation?

What does each ingredient contribute?

Could the formula be gentler?

Could it perform better?

Can we work with the same plant in different ways?

What can contemporary research tell us about the chemistry we are seeing?

And how can all of this sit alongside cultural knowledge and the relationships Aboriginal peoples have held with plants and Country for countless generations?

There has been a lot of experimenting.

Some completely new formulations.

Some old favourites pulled apart and rebuilt.

And plenty of batches that taught me what not to do.

But that process has led to some of the most considered products I’ve created since Ganbu Country began.

Ironbark Forest Glow is growing

One of the biggest changes happening behind the scenes has been the growth of the Ironbark Forest range.

I’ve been developing our new Shampoo Rebalance & Regrowth, Ironbark Forest Range and Conditioner Rebalance & Regrowth, Ironbark Forest Range, alongside a new Creamy Botanical Body Wash and Overnight Scalp Serum.

At the same time, I’ve gone back to one of Ganbu Country’s original best sellers, our Exfoliating Facial Cleanser, and given it one of its biggest upgrades yet.

These are different products with different purposes, but there is a botanical thread running through much of this new work.

Yellow Gum Eucalyptus leucoxylon subsp. pruinosa.

Yellow Gum now features through our shampoo, conditioner, body wash and upgraded facial scrub, and over time it has become one of the botanicals I’m most interested in understanding more deeply.

Not simply as an ingredient.

As a plant.

Introducing Rebalance & Regrowth

Hair and scalp care has been one of the biggest new areas I’ve been exploring.

When I started developing our Rebalance & Regrowth Shampoo and Conditioner, I wanted them to feel unmistakably like Ganbu Country from the beginning.

Not conventional haircare with a native botanical added at the end.

Yellow Gum sits within the range alongside botanicals including Rosemary, Lemon Scented Tea Tree and Kakadu Plum, with ingredients such as Panthenol, Colloidal Oatmeal, Beta Glucan and Hydrolysed Wheat Protein helping build out the wider hair and scalp formulations.

The conditioner has also given me the opportunity to work with Yellow Gum through different forms of extraction, including both a glycerine extract and an oil maceration, alongside botanical oils and conditioning ingredients.

What interests me isn't the idea of choosing one fashionable “hero ingredient” and asking it to carry an entire formula.

Plants are more complex than that.

And good formulations are too.

I’m much more interested in how ingredients relate to one another, native botanicals, botanical oils and contemporary cosmetic ingredients each having a reason for being there and contributing to the formula as a whole.

Bringing Ironbark Forest Glow into body care

I’ve taken that same thinking into our new Creamy Botanical Body Wash.

Yellow Gum is again part of the botanical foundation, alongside Lemon Scented Tea Tree and Kakadu Plum, with ingredients including Marine Moisturising Extract, Panthenol, Colloidal Oatmeal and Beta Glucan incorporated into the broader formula.

I wanted this one to feel simple in the best possible way.

Something you can reach for every day.

Creamy, fresh and botanical, while still carrying the character of the Ironbark Forest range.

Sometimes the products we use most often are the ones that deserve the most thought.

Letting an old favourite grow with us

Some of the work I’m most excited about hasn't involved creating something new at all.

I’ve also gone back to one of Ganbu Country’s best-selling products, our Exfoliating Facial Cleanser, and reconsidered a significant part of the formulation.

There is always a temptation when something works to leave it alone.

But I don't think a product should stop evolving simply because people already love it.

As my understanding of formulation has grown, I’ve wanted the products to grow with it.

One of the biggest changes has been moving away from the original potassium cocoate soap-based cleansing system and rebuilding the cleanser around Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, or SCI, with glucoside cleansers.

For me, that change represents much more than swapping one ingredient for another.

It allows the scrub to move away from a traditional alkaline soap base and into a softer, creamier, non-soap cleansing system at a more skin-friendly pH.

That means the cleansing side of the formula now makes much more sense alongside everything else I’ve built around it.

The exfoliation can still do its job, but it now sits within a more considered creamy base containing Yellow Gum glycerine extract and Yellow Gum oil maceration, Kakadu Plum, Colloidal Oatmeal, Beta Glucan, Panthenol, Niacinamide and botanical oils.

It is still recognisably the scrub people have loved.

But the formula around it is more refined, more balanced and much closer to where I want Ganbu Country skincare to be.

Keeping what matters while continuing to learn and improve.

That probably describes this whole next chapter quite well.

Looking more deeply at Yellow Gum

As Yellow Gum began appearing across more of the range, I found myself wanting to understand it beyond formulation.

What is actually inside this plant?

What naturally occurring compounds are present?

What changes when we work with different extraction methods?

What can analytical science show us that we can't see with our eyes?

Those questions led into our own GC–MS research into Eucalyptus leucoxylon.

Some time ago, we had the opportunity to undertake GC–MS research into Eucalyptus leucoxylon alongside Monash University, with a great deal of guidance and support in understanding the analysis and how that information could be used responsibly. At the time, the research gave us an incredible amount of data to work with, but during this quieter period I’ve found myself returning to it with much more curiosity, learning how to interpret the results more deeply, compare what we identified across samples, and explore how those findings sit alongside already published research on the same compounds.

Across our samples, compounds identified included eucalyptol (1,8-cineole), D-limonene, α-phellandrene and γ-terpinene. Revisiting that data has become less about simply knowing what compounds were present and more about understanding what the results can actually tell us, where the evidence ends, and what new questions they can help us ask about the plants we work with.

Across our samples, we identified a naturally occurring terpene profile including compounds such as eucalyptol, or 1,8-cineole, D-limonene, α-phellandrene and γ-terpinene.

Several of those compounds are already of interest within wider scientific research, particularly eucalyptol.

For me, though, the most exciting part isn't being able to place a scientific name beside something and suddenly call it valuable.

The plant already had value.

The relationship was already there.

The knowledge was already there.

What the research gives us is another way of looking.

It lets us move from Country, to extraction, to analysis, to existing research and then back into the workshop with better questions.

Where cultural knowledge and contemporary science meet

That relationship between different ways of knowing has become one of the areas I’m most interested in exploring through Ganbu Country.

Indigenous knowledge and contemporary science are often spoken about as though they belong to completely different worlds.

Traditional knowledge on one side.

Modern science on the other.

But I don't think the story is that simple.

Aboriginal peoples have spent countless generations observing plants, seasons, animals and ecological relationships.

People experimented.

They compared.

They adapted methods over time.

They learnt which parts of plants could be used and developed sophisticated ways of collecting, processing and preparing botanical materials.

Processes involving infusion, maceration, oils and fats, heat, aromatic plant materials, smoke and extraction have long histories within Indigenous relationships with plants.

Many techniques that are now described through the language of laboratories, botanical extraction or formulation have clear parallels with ways people were already working with plant materials through observation and practice.

That doesn't mean Indigenous knowledge and contemporary Western science are identical.

They aren't.

But it does mean we need to be careful about telling a story where Indigenous knowledge only becomes legitimate once modern science produces a paper that can explain part of it.

Indigenous knowledge does not need a laboratory to validate it.

At the same time, contemporary science gives us incredibly useful tools.

GC–MS allows us to look more closely at the chemistry within a botanical sample.

Research lets us investigate individual compounds further.

Formulation science allows us to understand things like extraction, pH, stability, preservation and the way ingredients behave when brought together.

For me, the interesting space is where those different ways of knowing can sit alongside one another.

Not one replacing the other.

Not one being asked to prove the other.

But each allowing us to look at the same plant from a different perspective.

Country gives us the relationship.

Culture carries knowledge and responsibility.

Contemporary science gives us additional tools to investigate.

And the workshop gives us somewhere to bring that learning together.

There is still so much to learn, and that is part of what makes this work exciting.

Native botanicals should mean more than a label

Australian native botanicals have become increasingly visible in skincare.

There is something exciting about seeing these plants recognised.

But there is also a risk that a native botanical becomes disconnected from everything surrounding it and reduced to an ingredient name printed on beautiful packaging.

For Ganbu Country, I want the relationship to go deeper.

Where did this plant come from?

What ecosystem does it belong to?

How are we harvesting it?

What happens when we extract it?

What can we learn about its chemistry?

What cultural knowledge and relationships surround it?

And importantly:

What are we giving back to Country in return?

Ganbu Country was never intended to simply take beautiful things from Country and turn them into products.

Our philosophy of Shared Stewardship is built around relationship and reciprocity.

The plants we work with are part of living ecosystems, connected to soil, water, insects, birds, mammals, fungi, fire and people.

Our skincare is one way of inviting people into that wider story.

It has never been the whole story.

Coming back slowly

So I don't really see this as a relaunch.

Ganbu Country never disappeared.

I just needed to become quieter for a while as life asked more of me somewhere else.

Looking back, I think that quieter period gave both me and the business something important.

Space.

Space to experiment without feeling that every experiment needed to become content.

Space to rebuild formulations rather than simply reproduce them.

Space to research plants more deeply.

Space to think about what I actually wanted Ganbu Country to become.

Space to learn how this work could fit alongside a very different family life.

And space to remember that growth does not always need to be visible while it is happening.

As we move into Guling and Country begins showing those first small signs of renewal again, it feels like a fitting time to begin sharing more too.

There is a lot that has been growing quietly.

New products.

Old favourites being reimagined.

Botanical research.

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