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A lifelong learner, Danny Battershill is a qualified chef, barista, bartender and restaurant manager. He has studied sustainable conservation and animal behaviour and is also a citizen scientist and musician who says his first real job was acting. Danny is the instigator of Earthstone Arts, which he describes as providing “people and passion empowerment” as well as running the Big Day Art markets. He spends a lot of time volunteering in the community. At 27 years old, suffering from chronic eczema, Danny has faced a number of demons, including drink, and came out with a desire to help others. He spoke with Terry Moore about the healing power of honey.
I came to the Coast because I was in hospital and not only in a bad place physically, but in every way. I’ve had eczema my whole life but it got a lot worse when I reached puberty. In my early 20s, I was not coping. People were always telling me to stop scratching and I was in and out of hospital all the time. I’d looked for ways to numb my mind. I had become an alcoholic, and not a very nice person – I was looking for comfort, acceptance and healing in all the wrong places. When I left hospital that time, I was going to be homeless. Luckily Dad came down and saw me. He was living in Stanmore Bay, so he came down with a trailer, got my stuff and drove me back up. A lot of good has come from living here. Dad raised me to see the world as full of possibilities.Stress is what makes my condition flare up. To manage stress I play music, especially guitar, and spend time thinking and creating. I have a whiteboard in my lounge and I draw the eco homestead I dream of building one day, or think about what my tiny homes village might look like. I meditate, read a lot of books and compose music. When I first moved here I didn’t know anyone, but that’s something I relished because it was a chance to start again and not let my past define me. I did a bit of volunteer work with local organisations, which helped me get to know people in the community. I worked at BBs in the Plaza and got to know the Plaza management and that connection lead to the Big Day Art markets. My illness has made me unable to work nine to five for very long. In the last 10 years I have been hospitalised more than 50 times, which made life very uncertain and of course that doesn’t work for an employer. I’m not an unreliable person, but that’s how it ended up looking. After I was fired from the last hospitality job I had, I was in my ward and I realised I was done with working for other people and paying their mortgages. I started Earthstone Arts to help local creative people promote their work, because I have sales and marketing experience. Because of how often I’ve tripped up in my own life and had to rebuild, I felt I had something to teach people. Even though I’m physically not that great, I can help people overcome their problems and see possibilities instead of obstacles, which is what I’ve learned to do the hard way. I’m also involved with Love Soup Hibiscus Coast and the community gardens and they are making a real difference in the world. When I’m in hospital I am kept in isolation because of all the open wounds. I have moments where I desperately need people around me, but mostly I cope okay with that and I don’t think Earthstone Arts would be what it is unless I’d had that time. If my skin’s well enough for me to open my eyes, I can work online and on social media from hospital too. When I’m in hospital I have to be helped to eat and go to the bathroom but when I’m at my weakest I’m also at my strongest because I know it takes real strength and faith to see me through.
I’ve learned that 95 percent of wellness comes with diet and managing stress levels. Recently I went off all my medications for the first time in my life – no steroids or chemotherapy and no pills because I feel like they did more damage than good in the long run. I get bad blood infections, including MRSA (which is antibiotic resistant) from wounds. The topical steroids have thinned my skin and made me susceptible to heat and stress; I get very itchy and then it doesn’t take much for my skin to break. Nothing worked long term and the infection wasn’t clearing my system. Whatever the doctors had to try, wasn’t working and I would have to recover twice – from the infection itself and then from the side effects of the medication. After all that, I could get sick again within a month. Then I discovered manuka honey. The information about it kept popping up and I’m very curious and like to research new things. I realised raw honey was a winner when I saw that in Egypt there are jars of honey that are 5000 years old that you can still use because it’s so dense in antibacterial, anti viral and anti inflammatory properties that nothing, even MRSA, can live in it. I first put honey on my skin about mid-way through last year. The best stuff is tremendously expensive, liquid gold – around $100 a kilo – but I got hold of a big jar of raw manuka honey through local beekeepers I know. My friend, Nakita Honnis, drove to North Shore hospital and gave it to me. I tried hot honey washes – a hot shower, followed by washing myself again with honey on a hot wet cloth. I’d basically be basting myself in honey and sit for half an hour until it dries in. At that stage I had many wounds and cuts and after half an hour I could actually feel the skin healing back over, which also made me want to scratch. It was like that for my whole body, almost before my eyes. My doctors were sceptical and that made me angry. I did that for a week and was out of hospital in six days instead of the normal 14 to 21 days and was MRSA clean. I couldn’t believe it. I still get flare ups and my skin is very temperamental but in terms of the level of deterioration and repair, I’m repairing faster than deteriorating now. It’s a slow process, but I’m okay with slow. I’m willing to let the honey do its thing. I’m developing a sunscreen because at the moment I can’t go in the sun without fully covering up – I’m very susceptible to sunburn because I have no barriers. Wearing a hoodie and jeans in the summer means I get hot and flushed and stared at all the time. I’m used to that. People fear what they don’t understand.
I do get out in the garden and am working on making flour from the acorns on massive oak trees at our place in Manly. I’ve set up a net to dry them and must have picked up around 10,000 acorns. Then I’ll wash them and grind them to make flour. My flatmate is teaching me to make smoked cheese and biltong. I feel that my health is improving because the world I’m part of is improving. This year is about refining the Earthstone Arts vision – understanding our direction and how to affect our world in a positive way. There are now half a dozen of us working with Earthstone Arts now and we are moving into different areas such as events.
I was diagnosed with chronic depression several times, but I see it more as ‘situational depression’ caused by the ups and downs of my illness. I remember a time when I was around 18 or 19 when I was at the end of my tether. I was drunk and had a fistful of sleeping pills. I was looking at myself in the mirror and thinking no one was truly going to miss me. Now I can’t comprehend how I got to that place because of what I’ve done since then and learning how to pull me through. Having said that, last year I had a serious mental breakdown. It was a time when they had had to put IV lines in my feet because they couldn’t get them in my arms. Sometimes, when my skin is so tight I can’t extend my arms, it’s like being squeezed tighter and tighter and you feel like you’re drying out. This time, I felt my skin snap and I screamed and threw a chair at a window in the hospital. I had to be held down. Now I know that I can heal and that it’s just a bad day, not a bad life. But right then, in the moment, I felt like no one understood what pain I was in. These days I take the occasional antihistamine but the main things I use are the crème de la crème of natural remedies – tumeric, garlic, pink Himalayan sea salt, manuka honey and kawa kawa leaves. But in hospital, the treatment for conditions like mine hasn’t changed. I want that to change and will be doing my best to see that happen.
