Cancelled: Rewild Immersion
5-day camp for adults
Gilwell Park, Gembrook, near Melbourne
Update 20/10/22:
Dear friends,
It's with mixed feelings that we let you know that, due to consistently slow ticket sales, we've decided to cancel the event and refund all ticketholders.
Thank you for supporting this work by getting involved, and we're truly grateful to you and everyone in our community who makes it possible for us to run events like this and continue to spread the skills and awareness that build deeper and deeper nature connection.
We're sorry for any disappointment, and we thank you for your patience and generosity in understanding that we did our best.
We're not sure why sales were so slow, it seems like it's just not aligned this time round. We may run a similar event in the future but at the moment it seems like the most alive thing is just to let it go for now, with optimism for the wonderful future events to come.
If you're interested in connecting with the work of the other facilitators, please head to their websites to learn about upcoming events that they have on -
If you want to continue your learning, here are some resources that you could check out in the meantime -
Claire's books My Year Without Matches, and Rewilding the Urban Soul.
This wonderful Ted Talk by Jon Young, "Repairing emotional isolation by reawakening deep nature connection".
And another favourite Ted Talk by Jon Jandai about simple earth-based living, "Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?"
If you want to still do something on the dates from November 2 - 6, here are some ideas for great camping spots that you can head out to with family and friends, or for a solo mission.
If you choose to stay home, even the smallest urban backyard is a great opportunity for a sit-spot - what birds, insects, or plants offer themselves to you for a moment of connection? Here is a guide to starting a sit spot practice.
Thank you again for investing in our work, and in your own growth. We're looking forward to seeing you again soon at a future event, and send blessings for an easeful Springtime your way.
With love,
Emily, Kate and The Nature's Apprentice Team
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
What does it look like to live a wild life in a highly domesticated world? How can we shift from being ‘tourists’, detached from our landscape, to connected, empathetic creatures in reciprocal relationship with our local rocks, trees, birds and animals?
In this 5-day rewilding camp, we will explore simple but time-tested practices to expand our awareness and awaken our innate curiosity and awe for the beings we share this planet with. We will apprentice to the crafts and skills that kept our ancestors alive for many thousands of years, skills that are common to human cultures around the world.
As we use our hands and bodies to forage and collect, craft and build, carve and spin, we find our bodies interweaving instinctively with the body of the Earth. We shift from admiring nature from afar to interacting, intimately, with our landscape. This is what we mean by ‘rewilding’; a return to a wilder or more natural, instinctive way of being. As we start to meet our daily needs from our immediate environment, every moment becomes an opportunity for connection.
“Skill is the most visible form of prayer”
This event is not just about the exchange of knowledge, but about the building and strengthening of community. After a challenging few years of isolation and devastating natural disasters around the country, it will be powerful medicine to simply share space and time together. To soften into the constant holding at the core of country and community. To create the conditions for collective wisdom to arise. Let’s emerge from Winter together and enjoy the rising energy of Spring.
Our final exploration will be how we weave connective practices into our lives more regularly. How we maintain the alignment to the daily and seasonal cycles, and soften the boundaries between the indoor and outdoor, the human and more-than-human worlds. How we might inch further open, even in the most subtle and barely perceptible way, a door to a different way of being that will remain open for the rest of our lives.
Workshops include:
Primitive shelter construction, bushcraft and fire by friction with Leafy, founder of Leafy Adventures
Leafy is an experienced primitive skills and adventure instructor, and an educator on edible and medicinal plants and animal processing. He’s also a qualified permaculture designer and outdoor recreationalist. Leafy’s knowledge is based on the experience of a year living in the bush, as well as countless hours learning from and teaching to others.
This workshop focuses on shelter from a survival perspective – how to select an appropriate site in the terrain, and the different types of shelter that can be made from natural materials found in the landscape. He will instruct on how to make bush string, and other forms of primitive weaving to make structures for a variety of purposes using traditional methods and individual creativity. Leafy will also teach primitive fire making, using ancient methods such a bow drill, hand drill, and fire plough.
Wild edible and medicinal plants, and bioregional herbalism, with Taj Scicluna aka The PermaPixie
Taj Scicluna is an artist and educator who fuses together her love of herbalism, foraging, writing, cooking, ecosystem health, and personal health. Taj supports people as they bridge the gap between themselves and 'nature', to support the 'remembering' that we belong to the botanical. Taj is a permaculture designer and consultant, and facilitates programs and workshops on grassroots herbal medicine and botanical education. The workshop will focus on the wild native and introduced plants that we find in abundance across our urban and wild landscapes. Taj will show us to safely identify and use plants for herbal first aid, and to improve our daily health. She will share how to better understand and map the plants available in our own local area, so that we can connect on a deep level with what is, literally, growing in our own backyards.
Wild tanning hides, with Josh McLean, founder of The Bush Tannery
The Bush Tannery is a rediscovery of our connection with nature and the traditional practices and teachings that tap into, and strengthen, that bond. Josh is a custodian of traditional techniques of taking almost any animal skin and processing it into beautiful, usable leather and fibre, for a multitude of purposes. Processing animal bodies is one of humanity’s most ancient crafts, and Josh has extensively studied many different traditional techniques from bark tanning to brain tanning.
His aim is to teach and support the most ethical, sustainable and respectful practices that celebrate life, through community engagement and sharing of the traditional skills and practices of tanning and leather crafting. All participants are welcome in this workshop, but engagement is optional. Those who process hides with Josh with have the opportunity to learn how to finish the process by smoking their hides, which includes how to build the correct smoker structure and type of fire.
For those who don’t wish to engage with animal processing, there will be alternative workshops including a guided nature hike.
Bird language, awareness skills and movement, with Emily Coats from Nature’s Apprentice
Emily has been working as an Apprentice at Nature's Apprentice for nearly a year and is committed to sharing with the world her passion for deep nature connection, ancestral skills, and soulcentric nature practices including Vision Quest. She has studied at Tom Brown Jnr's Tracker School and with bird language experts Jon Young and Andrew Turbill. Emily is also a dancer and weaves movement and nature connection practices together. Emily will facilitate workshops on bird language, sense opening and awareness practices, and movement and animal forms. These afternoon workshops will be at a slower pace allowing for more solo time in nature, dropping participants into deeper presence and connection to their body and surroundings.
In addition to these workshops, there will be daily small group sharing circles, sit spots and unstructured time for wandering, reflection, songs, storytelling and practicing your new skills.
Please note that Claire Dunn will not be a facilitator at this event, but she is hoping to attend with her newborn baby!
Details:
Included in your ticket is campsite accommodation for four nights (please bring your own tents and camping equipment) as well as all healthy, hearty, mostly organic meals (vegan and gluten-free options available) for the duration of your stay, and fresh fruit, tea and coffee whenever you like.
You are welcome to arrive on site and start setting up camp from 8:30am on Wednesday November 2nd. We recommend arriving no later than 9:30am as the program will start promptly at 10:30am. The event will finish at 4pm on Sunday November 6th.
This event is for people aged 18 years and older. No prior experience in ‘rewilding’ is required – just an open curiosity, and a willingness to reconnect to the wise and wily wildness that is already at the core of your being.
Location:
The event will take place at Gilwell Park, near Gembrook in the east of the Dandenong Ranges, about 60 minutes from Melbourne CBD. Gilwell Park has been the venue for many hundreds of nature education events, and is bordered by a natural creek.
Cost:
Full price ticket: $890 $790
Concession: (for people under 25, and concession card holders/low-income folks) $760 $660
Option to pay deposit of $200 now with balance of payment due Oct 19th.
Update: 11/10/22:
Due to slow ticket sales, we may be forced to postpone, or even cancel the event. If you're interested to come and haven't purchased yet, please do between now and Wednesday, October 19th, when we will make the decision whether or not we've sold enough tickets to go ahead with the event.
If you purchase your ticket between today and the 19th, you'll receive $100 off your ticket price. Everyone who has already purchased a ticket will also receive a $100 reimbursement. We've offering the reduced price because we would love to see this lovingly created event come to reality, and spend precious time together on the land. If you need a payment plan, please get in touch.
If you have already purchased a ticket and the event does not go ahead, you will be able to transfer you ticket to the future date, or receive a full refund. Here's hoping we'll see you all on November 2nd!
There will be a small number of volunteer/work exchange places available. Please email expressions of interest to emily@naturesapprentice.com.au We have filled all our volunteer positions. Thanks everyone! Email us if you’d like to be considered for a volunteer position at a future camp.
Cancellation policy:
If you have purchased a ticket and are no longer able to attend, it is your responsibility to sell/give away your ticket to someone else. Please let us know if you’re struggling to sell your ticket and we can try to connect you with someone looking to buy.
If you test positive for covid before the event we will issue you a full refund.
Please email organiser Kate at info@naturesapprentice.com.au with any questions.
Share the facebook event here.
We offer our respects to the Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples on whose land this event will take place. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.