Step into a weekend woven with earth, fire, story, and community. Under the wide open skies of central Victoria, we will gather to rekindle our deep belonging to the land — through hands-on crafts, myth-telling by the fire, nature connection and rewilding activities.

Are you yearning for a deeper connection with the wild stirrings of your soul, your creative potential, and the wild earth? To sit in sacred ceremonies with women, to wander in nature, to play, listen, and attune to the world.

Is it time to make a strong gesture to yourself and to mystery that you are ready to ask some of the deepest questions of your life? Is it time to take a leap into the unknown and find out what is possible when you cast off all familiarity and enter into a conversation with wild nature and the wilds of your soul?

An Andrew the Bird Guy event

After sold-out inaugural retreat in the sprawling forests of Gilwell Park during autumn of 2024, Andrew is stoked to be able to return (a little earlier in the season) in 2025! The beautiful Dandenong Ranges offers us everything we could ever need for 4 days of unadulterated, genuine nature connection, with the local forest birds proving themselves to be ideal teachers for delving deeply into bird language.  

An Animas Valley Institute event

The Animas Quest catalyses the encounter with soul by temporarily displacing everyday consciousness through five primary means: (1) solitude for three or four days and nights while (2) fasting (i.e., drinking water only), (3) being fully exposed to and enfolded within the forms and forces of nature,

This immersive, nature-based leadership program is the first of its kind in Australia. Building from many years’ experience delivering community learning that is grounded in the natural world, CERES and Nature’s Apprentice are coming together to offer a 10-month program that will create the kind of earth-based leadership and resilience we and our communities will need in the coming decades.

An Animas Valley Institute event

The soul yearns to dream itself into the world. Every dream emerges from the mystery of the soul and is an opportunity for our conscious self, our ego, to be further initiated into the secret stream of our deeper life.

An Animas Valley Institute Event

The Soulcraft Intensive is AVI’s popular five-day experiential plunge into the wild depths of Soulcraft; a synergistic set of nature-based practices designed to evoke the life-shifting experience of soul encounter. Your soul is your true self, those qualities that most deeply define and express who…

This ceremony is for those who are ready to step out of their comfort zone and make space for deep listening. We offer this as an alternative to our longer Vision Quest for those who are not ready for a four day fast or are unable to take 11 days out from their other commitments.

An Animas Valley Institute event

Deep Imaginal, Soulcraft and the Reanimation of the World: This is an advanced immersion, suitable only for those who have previously encountered hints (or full blasts) of soul, and who are resourced enough with their four facets of wholeness to wander more deeply into the world.

An Animas Valley Institute event

Sweet Darkness: The Initiatory Gifts of the Shadow, Projections, Subpersonalities, and the Sacred Wound, is Animas Valley Institute’s most intensive short program. Because of this, we require that people have participated in other Animas programs before applying to Sweet

An Animas Valley Institute event

Based on Bill Plotkin’s book, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche, this 5-day intensive is an experiential exploration of our human psyches as unique expressions of the universal forces and patterns of nature.

An Animas Valley Institute event

The Way of Council and the Art of Mirroring are invaluable practices on the descent to soul. Although much of the descent is solitary, gathering with others in council can make all the difference in finding our way.

Please note this event has been postponed.

Have you experienced the electric feeling of creating fire out of just a stick and a piece of wood?

There is a both a science and an art to the hand drill. We will succeed only if we approach the hand drill humbly, in service to learning as much as possible of its magical and mysterious ways.

After a sell-out Melbourne series we are coming to Castlemaine!

Have you experienced the electric feeling of creating fire out of just a stick and a piece of wood?

There is a both a science and an art to the hand drill. We will succeed only if we approach the hand drill humbly, in service to learning as much as possible of its magical and mysterious ways.

Nature's Apprentice is again offering a four-part workshop series to go deeper into this skill.

After a sell-out Autumn term, we are staying in the realm of birds for another term.

Birds: vocal, colourful and abundant even in the city, these charismatic backyard buddies are also powerful guides to the more subtle layers of nature observation. At any moment of the day, bird activity, or lack of it, can expand our awareness out beyond what we can directly see or hear, reaching our ears far across the land, appearing to others like magic.

Birds: vocal, colourful and abundant even in the city, these charismatic backyard buddies are also powerful guides to the more subtle layers of nature observation. At any moment of the day, bird activity, or lack of it, can expand our awareness out beyond what we can directly see or hear, reaching our ears far across the land, appearing to others like magic.

After years of running highly acclaimed bird language retreats in NSW, the time has come for andrewthebirdguy to hit the road and share the campfire with an excitable bunch of nature-loving Southerners. Nature’s Apprentice is delighted to host Andrew in our home territory.

This immersive, nature-based leadership program is the first of its kind in Australia. Building from many years’ experience delivering community learning that is grounded in the natural world, CERES and Nature’s Apprentice are coming together to offer a 10-month program that will create the kind of earth-based leadership and resilience we and our communities will need in the coming decades.

An Animas Valley Institute event - This contemporary Western embodiment of the ancient, pan-cultural vision fast is a dynamic wilderness rite for all who are seeking greater depth and clarity about life purpose and meaning.

The Soulcraft Intensive is Animas Valley Institute’s popular five-day experiential plunge into the wild depths of Soulcraft; a synergistic set of nature-based practices designed to evoke the life-shifting experience of soul encounter.

Join us in coming together in community on the land, crafting with hands and heart as we weave threads of connection to our lives, to community and to our wider web of relations.

We used to ‘know’ our belonging in our bones. As a culture we have grown away from intimacy with the more-than-human world, yet it waits for us…

The old ways are new again for the many now seeking to (re)learn the skills, practices and mindsets of our ancestors – everything from our food to footwear.

Come and reconnect with the cycles of life, death, and the rebirth of ancient knowledge. Processing animal bodies is an ancient art form practised by all cultures around the world for countless generations.