Freshwater Farm Australia Rosewater + Pink Clay Hand Wash

Gentle Castile hand washes - Australian owned & made! – We changed to Castile soap to save our hands last year, and won’t be going back to regular hand wash detergents. We started off with a very well known imported brand. While I was very happy with the Castile benefits, I wanted something that was made in Australia by an Australian- and preferably family-owned, company and hunted widely at health shops. Almost all carried the imported DB brand.

I finally found a local Castile - in Woolworths of all places - a Hemp Seed Oil Hydrating Castile Soap made from olive and coconut oils. Hemp? I was iffy, but bought a bottle to try. Bingo!

The Hemp Seed Oil soap is concentrated, but slightly more gluggy than I like. It is a clear liquid lightly tinted a greeny yellow. The smell is sharp, almost peppery in a very pleasant “green” scent. A little bit foams up well and goes a long way. It also works diluted 1:3 with filtered water for a foam bottle. Even diluted, there is a strong fragrance when you are soaping up, but the smell does not linger on your hands after. The soap rinses off easily and leaves your hands soft and hydrated. Perfect.

And today, while at Woolworths, I was delighted to find other flavours on the shelf. I picked up Rosewater + Pink Clay which is a lightly tinted clear pink, and Lemon Myrtle Oil + Manuka Honey that is a lightly tinted clear sunny yellow.

The Lemon Myrtle Oil + Manuka Honey is wonderfully fresh and lemony. The Lemon Myrtle notes can’t be mistaken. Love this.

The scent of the Rosewater + Pink Clay was a disappointment. There was no scent apart from a very, very slight whiff of something that smelt almost fishy to me. I thought of returning it to Woolworths, but decided it wasn’t worth the bother of a trip and dropped some Rose Geranium essential oil in it. It is OK now, but I wouldn’t be buying this variant again.

At Woolworths, these Castile hand washes come in 500 ml clear plastic pump bottles. Hopefully, in future, we can buy larger refill bottles. Or, even better, bring our pump bottles to be refilled.