It was Australia in the 1970s. A time when kids cruised their suburban neighbourhoods on banana-seat bikes, played cricket and hopscotch in the streets and spent the evenings watching popular shows like The Brady Bunch with their families.
For author Heidi Merika, life was a little different.
Raised by a “gypsy” mother, Heidi’s childhood was somewhat “erratic”. With a joy-filled laugh she recalls how, during some weeks, the family of three – Heidi, her sister and mother – would pitch their tent in bushland. At other times, they relied on the kindness of farmers, camping on their land. There were also squat houses and shared living accommodations thrown into the mix.
Some of Heidi’s earliest memories are of living in a tent on a dairy farmer’s paddock located near the New South Wales town of Murwillumbah.
“Mum would make cottage cheese out of milk, and she would ask my sister and I to take the cheese to the farmer. I’d get really embarrassed and end up just throwing the cheese away,” Heidi recalls.
“For me, the farmer represented what it was to be normal in Australia in the ’70s. Tip Top bread and Meadow Lea margarine. We just wanted that. To be ‘normal’. We didn’t even have a TV until we were teenagers.”
School life was equally unsettled.
“My sister and I sat down once and calculated the number of schools we went to through the years. We came up with 17 different schools.”
Other than feeling a little “different”, Heidi recalls a happy life. The family might not have had a lot in terms of money or possessions, but the financial strain taught Heidi invaluable life skills.
“We lost contact with our dad when I was about seven or eight,” she tells salt. “At one stage, we moved to Tasmania, where we were living on an island off the coast. We didn’t see our dad for over 20 years.
“Mum would get the supporting parent’s pension, so we didn’t have much to live on.”
As a result, the family would forage. At the time, fruit trees were abundant in Tasmania, and as she collected ripe plums and pretty dandelions, Heidi would dream of life with a white picket fence and the quintessential Australian house.
Then, when she was 13, a traumatic event turned the family’s carefree life upside down. Unknowingly, this life-altering experience would also spawn a passion in Heidi, unintentionally shaping her future.
“I got badly burned when someone lit a cigarette near a drum of petrol,” she explains. “The petrol exploded and I was burnt to over 50 per cent of my body. My mum was asked to come to the hospital and told to organise a priest and read the last rites. They said I would pass away that night.
“When I got out of hospital many months later, we saw a naturopath who I kept seeing throughout my teens on and off.”
Her experience with this naturopath inspired the young Heidi to enrol in the Southern School of Natural Therapies. Following her studies, she unearthed a particular interest in herbalism and the role plants can play in our health.
“I realised that in training as a herbalist and naturopath, the focus is more on products, not on the plants themselves. I realised that the plants I recognised I had learnt from my hippy mum and growing up foraging. I didn’t know a lot, and it jolted me awake – how could I call myself a herbalist if I couldn’t identify plants?
“So I took all these samples and started taking them to nurseries to find out what they were called. From there, I figured out what they do. It started a process that hasn’t stopped.”
Today, Heidi lives in Tewantin, where she continues to harness the power of the great outdoors.
She teaches herbal medicine courses both online and in person, sells herbal starter kits and hosts wildcrafting workshops with another Sunshine Coast herbalist, Kat Greene.
No longer offering clinical consulting, Heidi’s sole focus is now on educating the wider community, and she says more and more people are opening up to the idea of alternative treatments.
Earlier this year, she released her second book, From the Wild, a herbal medicine cookbook offering simple, nature-based recipes and healing home remedies from 30 of the world’s most common edible wild plants.
From cat’s ear to cobbler’s pegs, dandelion to dock and nasturtium to wild raspberry, Heidi’s insights educate readers on how to safely use the natural vitamins found outdoors.
“The best part about understanding these plants is that they just give you much trust in the world – in life and in nature,” she says. “It was really highlighted during COVID when there were supply chain issues that medicine could fall into short supply.
“But if you go outside and walk around your block, you can learn – that plant is anti-viral, that’s anti-bacterial, that’s high in essential fatty acids.
“You can realise that you will be okay. Your family will be okay.”
In Heidi’s home kitchen, you will find her creating dhal from the leaves of cobbler’s pegs or grinding dock seeds into a flour to make banana bread. Both contain healing properties and both are featured in her cookbook.
Now, living an alternative lifestyle by choice, one has to ask – what do Heidi’s own daughters think of their mother’s love for foraging?
She laughs, “They think it’s interesting.”
“The girls had a pretty stable home life growing up, but they do prefer medicine from the doctor. I do try to live lightly on the Earth. I’m pretty eco-conscious and the girls have grown up on a plant-based diet. My childhood was way more out there.”
However, Heidi is quick to acknowledge that her life experiences – even her injuries as a teenager – set her on this journey that she loves.
“Now that I’m in my fifties and I can look at that whole life perspective and consider it, things start to make more sense.
“Knowledge is power. It is actually really, really simple to use plants. People just don’t have the confidence unless someone shows them.
“That’s what I’m doing.”
You will find Heidi at the Sunny Coast Herb Fest, a community event that features guest speakers, demonstrations and herbal products. It’s on June 15. Visit everydayempowered.com.au/herbfest/. To purchase Heidi’s books, visit heidimerika.com.au