This course is full, but you can contact us to be placed on a waiting list.

Led by Christine Venner-Westaway

This six-day Retreat invites you into a space to reflect on your life’s spiritual journey thus far, to understand how the human condition affects your decisions, and to come to a greater awareness of next steps on your spiritual journey. A looking forward by looking back - what to keep, what to lay aside.

You will be offered a range of ‘windows’ to the soul (interactive drawing, Enneagram personality insights, small group conversations, writing/journaling), opportunities in community to reflect, share, and learn together.

Cost is $720 for single room/ $550 for twin share, all meals included.

REGISTER HERE

About the facilitator:

Christine’s spiritual formation started from a very young age.  In her teenage years she entered the convent and remained there for 18 years.   Her experience of walking such an “active/contemplative” way of life has provided her with a substantial and enduring spiritual framework, spanning the next 40 years.  For the last ten of those years, she has been attending the Brisbane Quaker Meeting House where she formally embraced membership in 2020.  She brings her lived experienced rather than any theological, biblical discourse or spiritual school of thought to walk the Quaker way as faithfully as possible.  More recently she has been led to a life of nonviolent direct action and bearing public witness to the Peace Testimony. This journey, and the many other spiritual lessons and “tools, acquired along the way, will be on offer, alongside those shared by other Retreat participants.

This course is now full. Please contact Sheila if you want to be placed on a waiting list.

Led by Sheila Keane, Matt Lamont, and David Johnson, with Felicity Rose as accompanying Elder. This year long course is designed to

• respond to a deep spiritual hunger for more

• deepen/ transform your spiritual life

• establish in you an ongoing rhythm of spiritual practice

• enable you to better discern and live into your own leadings

The course starts with a residential Opening Retreat at Silver Wattle, 7-13 February 2025, followed by weekly offline reading & video materials (a commitment of 3-5 hours per week). Over the year, there will also be 13 live Zoom sessions (held Sunday afternoons) which will include presentations and provide opportunities to explore your spiritual experience. The course topics follow inward and outward movements of the spirit concluding with an exploration of your own leadings toward contemplative action.

The Closing Retreat will be held 6-10 December 2025, also at Silver Wattle.

Click here for more DETAILED COURSE INFORMATION.

Cost: The fee for the course (which includes tuition and two residential retreats) is $1,845 for the year. However, we do not want cost to be a barrier to participation. Financial assistance is available.

Led by: Doug Amarfio and Michael Griffith. 

Judith Wright lived her last decades in the Queanbeyan–Palerang landscape  (which includes Bungendore, Braidwood and Lake George). She was passionately committed to working on a Treaty for Aboriginals (with her partner Nugget Coombs) and she was deeply immersed in the native flora and fauna. Her deep friendship with Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal gave focus to her twin passions. 

This course will focus on the prose texts (Cry for the Dead and We Call for a Treaty) and poetry that define her relationship to country. The course will begin with an introduction to the landscape around Silver Wattle and its indigenous contexts and will then move into an exploration of the texts. The course will include a visit to Braidwood, the surrounding countryside and the house which Judith Wright built and where she wrote her major last works in the last decades of her life. We will also have an excursion to the National Gallery to explore developments in Aboriginal art that have a direct bearing on Judith Wright’s vision.