For Jack in the days of Whomp

Aurapel has an origin story.

It's not linear, origin stories often aren't. You, yourself began as a set of consequences a millennia before your birth. It begins in time. We acknowledge the passing of time as a synthetic, adrenal-pumping tick.  Though, not in nature or, in childhood. There, time passes with a whomp, it's a pulsating heart; a vibration. It was in the Days of Whomp where I met Jack. Jack was a testament to survival. In his youth, he was a country boy, Tenterfield-bred, shooting rabbits for food and sleeping under stars in old corn bags. As a young man; a Prisoner of War caught between the violent fracture of Changi and Borneo.  Jack the old man, was my neighbour. Weathered and patient. Always waiting after school at the bus stop to collect me for our afternoon adventures.

We would ride up and down to the Maroochy River & Chambers Island. Balancing buckets on our handlebars, casting nets for mullet. The days would turn freely and I'd return home sun-kissed with a bounty of catch. But the fish weren’t the only thing biting. I’d sport a constellation of bites, compliments of our local mosquitoes and midgies.I never actually wore repellant as a child, it repelled me! The stickiness and slapping stink! Alas, I had the war wounds to prove it, and no amount of mercurochrome painted (by Jack) onto these bites, could save me from the sinking embarrassment I felt at school assembly. I would struggle to hide the scabs under the hem of my skirt.

One day Jack was not waiting at the bus stop. He’d passed away performing a benign task but he was still everywhere on the salt-laden breeze of the Maroochy river.  Life had to unfold for my pain point to evolve, Aurapel is the evolution of this very subconscious.Somehow I ended up in a brief stint working for a pest-control company. I very quickly became overwhelmed and repulsed by the chemical load used to combat insects. We seek out nature as a salve. How can we reconcile touting along our own personal chemical trails, right back into it? We each have a role in nature, as humans we are supposed to be guardians. Even mosquitos work alongside bees as nectar pollinators. Did you know nectar is in fact the mosquito's primary source of food? We have neglected our own roles for far too long.

With my pre-existing design and aromatherapy skills and the newly acquired pest control license, I set out to make a product that harmonised with nature, protected our skin from our buzz kin, and smelled real-damn good. It was conceived, drawing on a decade ago, in my little Nambour kitchen; Aurapel, in a bottle so beautiful it sits on a shelf not hidden in a drawer. 

I did it for Jack and the Days of Whomp, and for you and yours.

- Kate Smith, Founder of Aurapel