Courses & Events
Food for the Soul 2027: A Year of Spiritual Deepening
Led by Sheila Keane and Matt Lamont, 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, 5-11 February 2027, 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 19-25 November 2027, also at Silver Wattle.
Click here for DETAILED COURSE INFORMATION
As part of the registration process, we ask you to submit an application, including a brief description of your motivations for participating in the course, so we can ensure it is a good fit. This is also a time to have your questions addressed before committing to the course. Contact Sheila.Keane@silverwattle.org.au if you want information on how to apply.
Applications close 15th November 2026
Cost: The fee for the course (which includes tuition and two 6-day residential retreats) is $2,250 for the year. However, we do not want cost to be a barrier to participation. Financial assistance is available.
Working and camping Retreat at Silver Wattle
Working and camping Retreat at Silver Wattle at Weereewa (Lake George)
Through this volunteer experience, to conduct repairs, you’ll be immersed on this spacious property with old gardens, renewed orchards, and share in this rare ecosystems, with bush walksspectacular landscape and native wildlife. This is an ideal spiritual working opportunity to COME TOGETHER and help contribute to the future of workshops and environmental engagement.
Contact us if you would like to participate.
Judith Wright: Poet and Activist for First Nations People and the Environment
Led by: Michael Griffith & Doug Amarfio
Focus: Judith Wright: Poet and Activist for First Nations People and the Environment, in the context of some poems by First Nations People around the globe.
This event is the Quaker Poetry Group face to face annual meeting. All are invited, not just poetry group members.
Participants are invited to contribute any poems by either Judith Wright or First Nations People that fit the themes of this meeting- see below (please send poems direct to Rosegriffith@bigpond.com).
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 Indigenous poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal gave focus to her twin passions. Other First Nations poets who could be included in this context: Joy Harjo, Layli Long Soldier, Jack Davis, Evelyn Araluen, Ali Cobby Eckermann. With Judith Wright these explore ecological stewardship, colonial impacts on land, and the deep spiritual ties between Indigenous peoples and the natural world.
REGISTRATIONS CLOSED
Cost: $720 for a single room, $550 for a shared room
Please pay for this course by direct deposit to:
Silver Wattle
BSB: 633 000
Acc: 141 426 890
Please include your name & course in reference
Garden, Land care & Sojourners Gathering - February 18th - 22nd 2026
Come to Silver Wattle to spend time in the garden, caring for the trees, or to sojourn with others. There will be time for activity, rest, reflection and worship, walking the landscape, learning and working in community and eating delicious, healthy meals prepared by Sam Hawker.
Attendance as a volunteer is free of charge
Quaker Climate Action Plan and Active Hope
Registrations Closed
Led by Jane Hope and Samara Pitt.
This course will be held at Silver Wattle Quaker Centre. Are you working for change in our troubled world? Are you passionate about taking action for a safe climate? Do you want some dedicated time with others to discover what might be yours to do? Or do you want some inspiration to keep going with the climate action work you are already involved in? If so, then this course is just right for you.
The course leaders have used the Active Hope work of Joanna Macy as a way to be encouraged, to engage with others and discover what is ours to do as we face climate change. We see that it could also empower Quakers as we enact the Quaker Climate Action Plan.
The Active Hope course unfolds as a Spiral journey through four stages: Coming from Gratitude, Honouring our Pain for the world, Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes, and Going Forth. The journey helps us experience first hand that we are larger, stronger, more creative - and more deeply interconnected - than we knew.
We will spend time experiencing nature connection, sharing in deep reflection in both large and small groups, singing and eating together, and learning some frameworks and tools for responding with and learning from Quaker depth and wisdom to the climate emergency and extinction crisis. We will look closely at how this body of work connects to Quaker practices and concerns, and how Quakers, and other activists, collectively can use its insights to respond to the confronting situation we face.
With this intention, for the final ‘Going Forth’ section of the Spiral where we reflect on our work for change in the world, we will focus on the proposed actions in the Quaker Climate Action Plan, which are relevant for Quakers and non-Quakers alike. Cost: $415 for a single room, $315 for a shared room
Registrations Closed
Please pay for this course by direct deposit to:
Silver Wattle
BSB: 633 000
Acc: 141 426 890
Please include your name & course in reference
Registrations close: 30/01/2026
The two course leaders are from Gembrook Retreat, which is a 22 acre property on the border of Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung/Bunurong country on the outskirts of Narrm/Melbourne. It is a trust property set up by Maggie Dunkle, a Quaker woman, in 2000. Maggie believed that the property should be made available for all to experience spiritual renewal through connection with the land. In this time of climate crisis, we believe that by practising simplicity, community, land-based contemplation and engaging in the work of decolonisation, we can equip and encourage each other to live a soulful life. Jane and Samara have been running Active Hope workshops for 3 years.