How Thursday Plantation Started

Sacred tea tree lake, Lennox Head NSW .

After 5 months of trying to get rid of this infection using all of the best knowledge of pharmacists, doctors, as well as folk medicine and witchdoctor recipes from around the world, Christopher arrived at the end of his overland trek in London.
On arrival in London Christopher consulted a leading specialist and was advised, after taking swabs, that the infection was regarded as incurable by the London School of Tropical Medicine. He was then told that the only known treatment would be to have a general anaesthetic and have the toenails removed surgically, and the epithelium (the top skin) scraped to physically remove the infected tissue.

This would then be followed by a severe caustic preparation to attempt to inhibit any regrowth. There was a serious risk of losing the toenails, and of not necessarily removing all traces of the infection so recurrence was a very real possibility.

Help arrived from Australia.

Delicate flower and leaf tip of Melaleuca alternifolia, notice the fluorescent yellow tips (like our labels) and the oil glands visible as yellow dots on the leaf .

It was at this moment that he met up with his brother, Michael Dean, who had recently arrived from Australia on a business trip. Michael bought with him a curiosity, produced by their step-father, Mr Eric White, from the magical wetlands of Northern New South Wales, Australia. Michael had brought some precious drops of Australian Tea Tree Oil, an oil renowned through folklore, and from original medicine and early scientific discoveries, as an outstanding healing oil.

Fine foliage of Melaleuca alternifolia in early morning dew at the Thursday Plantation, Ballina NSW

Total remission of all symptoms.
He was on the threshold of deciding whether to accept the best medical advice of the day.
Within ten minutes of applying the oil his brother brought, the intense itching and agonising pain, which had caused bleeding all around the feet, started to lessen. Within 4 hours the swelling of the toes and the redness had subsided to a near normal colour. Within 4 days there was a total remission of all symptoms and the feet were completely healed to normal. At this moment Christopher realised his step-father had an extraordinary product on his hands.
Christopher and his wife Lynda, with their 6 month old baby made plans to go back to Australia and rejoin Christopher's step-father in helping him in his dream.
Eric White - a man with a mission.

A rare photo of Eric White the original pioneer who established Thursday Plantation as the world's first tea tree plantation. Typically Eric strides in front of the tractor searching for his beloved tea trees deep in the Bungawalbyn wetlands of Northern NSW.

It is worth going back a bit to understand how Eric White, a cine cameraman with the ABC, a man who had worked on exciting movies around the world, including African Queen, King Solomon's Mines, and Hatari in Africa before he migrated to Australia, had now set his mind not on movie making but on the mission of bringing, to the world stage, the remarkable qualities of this extraordinary Australian product.

Eric had single mindedly searched the wetlands of Northern New South Wales, identifying, through painstaking searching of remote swamp land, the location of all of the major stands of Melaleuca alternifolia still left standing after the overwhelming destruction they had faced over the previous 180 years of white colonisation.
The tea tree was regarded as a pest, and wetlands were regarded as targets for drainage and landfill and restoration into low grade farmland for cattle, sugar cane, or soy beans.
Eric White was certain that this short, unloved tree held a secret far more precious than any of these imported agricultural crops.

Eric identified the purest genetic band of tea tree oil.

He persevered alone, often regarded as a fool, following his dream of identifying the purest genetic band of tea tree oil producing trees, and then attempting to reproduce this band of high grade quality trees as a plantation. In doing so Eric was overcoming one of the fundamental problems in essential oil production world-wide. The problem was the enormous range and variation in quality, which occurs naturally. This is never more so than in tea tree oil, where side by side trees can co-exist which botanically seem indistinguishable, and yet chemically produce oils of totally different characteristics.
One may have an oil of high grade therapeutic value, a boon to man, while alongside a near identical tree can produce an oil which is heavy with cineole, a low grade antiseptic, virtually useless for the multiplicity of therapeutic uses that tea tree is famous for.

First ever scientifically developed plantation.

Tea tree in flower (sometimes called snow-in-summer)

Eric was the first to home in on the genetic location of the very best source of tea trees in the world. In the Bungawalbyn basin of Northern New South Wales he located an extraordinary grove of the mother trees, and here after 4 years of pleading with the New South Wales Crown Lands Department he was granted a lease on which to cultivate the first ever scientifically developed plantation of tea tree.

Christopher Dean smelling the sweet honey fragrance from the Melaleuca alternifolia flowers.

Thursday Plantation nursery under serious flood, Bungawalbyn 1980. Mt Moonem in the background always cast a mystical spell over this beautiful, wild land.

Typical flood at the original bush distillery of Thursday Plantation, Bungawalbyn 1979. Flood waters typically reached up to 5.5m deep across this basin.

When Christopher discovered for himself the unique and remarkable value of tea tree oil, he decided to rejoin Eric. He was penniless after having spent all of his savings on his overland trek, and yet he was now driven by the same passion and conviction as Eric.

On phoning Australia to tell Eric about his decision, he found that Eric had suffered a major heart attack and was in hospital, in intensive care with all hope of completing his project doomed. Eric had three successive failures of plantings, having successively given way to floods and droughts, and his meagre savings had all gone. Now his health was failing and his dream was ebbing away.

Lynda Dean with her children flooded in at Bungawalbyn, 1981.

With little more than a handful of clothes Chris and Lynda moved up to live in the wilds of Bungawalbyn. They had no home, nor any money. Their first house was built from the scrounged remnants of a timber scrap heap and what could be found from the local tip.
The plantation was 17 kilometres from the nearest mail service, and an equal distance from a telephone. There was no power or running water, and the land was regularly inundated and cut off, sometimes for weeks at a time by the awesome floods of the region. Yet here Christopher could feel the magic in the trees.
Here was the largest and most majestic of the medicinal tea trees. And taking the seed and following the careful planning of his step-father, Christopher continued the work Eric had started. And the very first plantation of Australian Melaleuca alternifolia was laid down.

The very first distilling at Thursday Plantation Bungawalbyn April 1979. using a primitive recycled old bush still and much hard labour the first precious drops of Thursday Plantation tea tree oil started to flow on this day. Christopher Dean In yellow t-shirt.

Life for the Deans' in this wild and primitive world was an extraordinary episode of triumph and tragedy. The local council tried to evict them as hippie settlers. It was a thoroughly `red-neck' region objecting to the eco radical hippies who were flocking into the region to celebrate the Age of Aquarius and a new found love and respect for the earth. Only a handful of people really understood.

The bush home of Christopher & Lynda Dean was made from recycled materials from the tip.

Christopher and Lynda persevered and started to produce tea tree oil from a traditional bush cutting method.
Their first batches of oil that they tried to sell were shunned by the essential oil buying world, and by now Christopher had realised that only a handful of people really understood the true value of this oil.
He became obsessed with the mission of bringing Australian Tea Tree Oil to the world.
A safer alternative and a renewable resource.

In his vision he saw that this was the natural antiseptic oil of the 21st century. It was the safer alternative, a renewable resource which worked wonderfully well on the skin and could replace many more dangerous drugs and antibiotics for simple everyday first aid use.
Driven by this obsession, but still having no funds, Christopher and Lynda started to sell their tea tree oil at the local markets.

Christopher Dean sitting on top of the tea tree leaf bags ready to head to the still, 1979.

Using a kerosene lantern and candles for illumination they would hand fill the bottles in their wooden shack in the forest.
Labels were hand drawn with crayons and the bottles driven out in their old station wagon, where a table was set up and detailed hand written signs outlining much of the history and extraordinary medical research that had previously existed on tea tree oil was laid out for all to see.
The magic of this oil was contagious
It was through this early marketing, direct to the hippies in the markets, that tea tree oil began to take root. The magic of this oil was contagious.

Lynda Dean at the Tanelorn Festival, spreading the word, 1981.

Once people had used it they discovered the remarkable results they got on psoriasis, sores, eczema and rashes that they had had for years, on healing everyday problems like cuts, stings, burns, bites, pimples, vaginal infections, sore throats and the like.
There was an overwhelming positive feedback which drove the Deans on to build up this Australian Tea Tree Industry.

Lynda showing the children, Chris, Nick and Kia how to strip the tea tree leaf.

Recognising that they couldn't do this alone without funds, and also the importance of creating this product for the whole world, the Deans established the Australian Tea Tree Industry Association and lobbied the government to get involved in supporting research and building up awareness of the wonder and value of Australian Tea Tree Oil.
Soon hundreds of farmers began to rethink their options of destroying the environment for the sake of low grade agricultural, high chemical use products, and instead began rehabilitating their land with a native crop tolerant of inundation, requiring very low fertilising needs, and able to be grown in a sustainable way on a permanent basis with very little intervention.
Backed by the Australian government The Australian Tea Tree Industry was born. The Australian government got behind them with agricultural research, followed by detailed scientific studies on the applications of the oil.

Christopher tying up the bags of leaf each one typically weighed 60-70kg. Note bracelet of blood, an occupational hazard when 2-year-old daughter swung the knife!

Many amazing features of the oil were discovered, and meanwhile the word of mouth continued to spread the wonders of the oil.
By 1986 Christopher had confirmed the place of Thursday Plantation as the leading research company on the tea tree oil market, and he set off on a world-wide trip crusading to create an awareness of tea tree oil around the world.
The oil was delivered in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Dallas, London and on through Sweden, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand. Within a few short years 20 countries had come to learn of the remarkable properties of Australian Tea Tree Oil.

Thursday Plantation 100% pure Tea Tree oil. From one man's dream to bring tea tree oil to the world, Thursday Plantation now exports to over 23 countries guaranteeing finest quality therapeutic grade tea tree oil. Truly a first aid kit in a bottle.

At the same time tens of millions of trees were now being planted and a magnificent sustainable industry was now underway returning hundreds of millions of trees to the native lands. At last we had begun to reverse the previous 200 years of deforestation of the tea trees.
Thursday Plantation Laboratories has used the lessons it has learnt in taking this one product from obscurity to abundance, to apply research techniques to many plant actives.

Thursday Plantation Laboratories is now a pioneer in the burgeoning field of Phytotherapy (medicine from plants). It is from the humble tea tree that a whole new culture of alternative therapy is being prepared in a scientific way to give credibility back to the plant medicines of the earth.
In February 2001 Thursday Plantation took over Australia's pioneer in liquid herbal extracts, Greenridge Botanicals. We also searched the world for safe and effective natural therapeutics. Our brief was to discover only products that were at least as good or better than synthetic pharmaceuticals in action, and which were many times safer in side effect profile. We added Bekunis, Nature's Remedy, and Veromax into the range of natural medicine. Drug free pain relief, clinically proven sexual performance enhancement, and a wide range of effective herbal preparations to assist in treating mild depression, liver toxicity, weak eyes, gastric problems, and many other common ailments now join tea tree oil as credible scientifically proven aids to wellbeing and good health.
The story of discovering and presenting the world's finest natural antiseptic from a wild native product has set a paradigm for the responsible delivery of safe and effective natural therapeutics which offer a better safer choice for people around the world.

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Pacific Highway, Ballina, NSW 2478
Phone: +61 (0)2 66205 100 Fax: + 61 (0)2 66205 101
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