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Nicotiana benthamiana, known as pituri to indigenous Aboriginal tribes who use it as chewing tobacco, underwent a genetic mutation roughly 750,000 years ago to help it thrive despite the extreme conditions of the Outback, says Peter Waterhouse, a plant geneticist at Queensland University of Technology.

The "pituri" is much prized by the blacks.

At Glenormiston, one of the stations visited, the blacks had just returned from the Mulligan River, where they had procured their season's supply of "Pituri."

During this excursion Kennedy noticed that the blacks were given to "chewing tobacco in a green state;" but the "tobacco" was, of course, the pituri plant, which they are accustomed to masticate.