On the weekend of Thursday 15 til Sunday 18 May 13 students and Peter set off on the long promised low Carbon footprint retreat to western Victoria.

 

Our journey to Warrnambool on Thursday evening was by extremely comfortable and modern VLine train giving us a chance to eat our packed dinners and get to know each other a little better.

 

On our arrival Thursday night we were met by our bus driver Fiona who ferried us to our various places of accommodation in the vicinity of the town centre.  On the way Fiona paused at Karen Wilde’s beautiful yoga studio allowing us to drop some of our gear and to orient us for the next morning.

 

Friday saw us up bright and early for Pranayama at 7am followed by a cuppa and an extended asana session at which we were joined by a number of local students.  After the morning session we headed off for a yummy and picturesque brunch overlooking the southern ocean.

 

After taking some free time to explore Warrnambool we reconvened in the late afternoon for another session of restorative poses and inversions.  Friday evening had us out to and enjoyable dinner together at a Thai restaurant.

 

Saturday was an epic day on which we gathered early for a short yoga session and then jumped onto Fiona’s bus, coffee in hand for a 90 minute trip further west to the Budj Bim World Heritage Landscape.  At Budj Bim we were met by our our wonderful guide Ruben, a Gunditjmara man, and taken to some of the major sites of significance in this vast zone.

 

Over 4 hours we learned little of how the Gunditjmara people worked with the natural resources and environment of the Victorian south west region to establish a place of human society over the past 30,000 years.  We saw the remains of sites of permanent human habitation in the form of stone hut foundations, sites of aquaculture including eel traps carved out of solid rock, of holding ponds and of smoking trees among myriad other things.  We even heard the legend of Budj Bim, a small volcanic mountain rising out of the plain reminiscent of the dome of a head, of it having once spit blood and teeth out over the plain.  Geological study reveals that this volcano had not erupted for 30000 years making this one of the world’s oldest instances of continuous oral history.

 

Our day at Budj Bim finished with late lunch at the Tae Rak (Lake Condor) Aquaculture Centre which included some the local indigenous delicacies including eel of course.

 

Then we were back to Warrnambool and to another restive yoga session in the late afternoon.  Saturday night was another fun outing to a Warrnambool restaurant together before (most of us) hit the hay.

 

Sunday we had a late start before a long late morning yoga session followed by yet another group meal before gathering ourselves for the afternoon train journey home on which we did some more bonding and shared our experience of a very full weekend retreat.

 

The consensus was that it was a wonderful weekend.  We extend a very big thank you to Karen Wilde for helping us in many ways over the weekend and making our stay so very comfortable and enjoyable.