About The Eco Retreat

Founded in 2020, The Eco Retreat began as a search for a more nature-connected, sustainable and healthy way of life. In early 2026, that dream found its home on the Boonah farm. Here, amidst the misty foothills of the Otways, we are the custodians of a sacred retreat for nature-based living, contemplative and creative practice, organic farming, rewilding and community well-being.

Meet the Custodians

We (Marion and Richard) are the founders of The Eco Retreat and the newest custodians of Boonah Farm, though since arriving, we often feel it is the land that is stewarding us.

Our roots trace back to regional farming communities in Tasmania and the Adelaide Hills. Yet despite those beginnings, life eventually accelerated into busy corporate careers in urban Melbourne. For over a decade, feeling burnt out and longing for the simplicity of a nature-based life, we quietly plotted our return to a nature-based life.

Marion is a coach, ecotherapist, mindfulness teacher, artist and spiritual ecologist. Through her community work, she helps people reconnect with nature, remembering our sacred relationship and that we are nature trying to heal and restore ourselves. Her shift toward being actively involved in nature projects grew while particpating in an urban Eco Champion program where she started rewilding their suburban backyard in Glen Iris, getting involved in local rewidling volunteer projects and facilitating local ecotherapy circles. Today, she manages and facilitates community events for The Eco Retreat, including establishing the Otways Women's Circle. You can find out more about Marion here.

Richard is a leading sustainability technologist and SaaS co-founder helping the global built environment decarbonise. Deeply passionate about humanity’s shift toward sustainability, he brings mindfulness and compassion to everything he does. As he transitions away from corporate life, Richard focuses on supporting green investment, living simply, building out the retreat project, and diving into landcare, trail making, permaculture, birding and connecting to community life at Boonah Farm. He is frequent at Noel's secondhand bookshop in Deans Marsh, where he'll often stop for a yarn and another book to add to the bookshelf.

Our Vision

At its core, Spiritual Ecology reminds us that the ecological crisis is not merely a problem of carbon emissions or industrial failure; it is the physical symptom of a deeper spiritual rupture, a story of separation that has severed humanity from the sacred, living Earth. When we view nature as a resource to be consumed rather than a web of kinship, we lose our ground.

The World Health Organisation has named climate change the single largest health threat of our time. The growing mental health epidemic, particularly among young people is a clear signal that our dominant cultural models are failing us. Disconnected from the land, the body, and a collective purpose, we are experiencing systemic exhaustion.

Yet this moment is also a profound threshold. Alongside the ecological crisis and the rapid rise of the AI era, there is a growing imperative for deep climate resilience, localised food webs, village-mindedness, human arts, and ancestral wisdom. We really need a cultural transformation and a re-storying of what it means to be human. Throughout history, during periods of severe cultural unraveling, retreat spaces have served as vital sanctuaries and repositories of wisdom, preserving sacred stories, creative arts, and emerging deep spiritual insight when outer systems fracture.

A Shift Towards Reciprocal Relationships & Community

Boonah Farm is created in this ancient tradition: a sanctuary to remember our place within the living web of nature. We offer a place to slow down, heal the rupture of separation, and cultivate the inner and outer capacities needed for our time and for the distant future of our planet.

Through immersive retreats, workshops, and collaborative projects, we foster community well-being, deep reciprocity with the land, and the restoration of a sacred relationship with the living Earth and more-than-human kin.

We work to to unlearn internalised systems of oppression, supporting First Nations sovereignty, and exploring how we transform our relationship to land, power, and practice.

We are profoundly grateful to be alive at this pivotal moment in history, to co-create meaningful, land-based experiences that ignite resilience, restorative hope, courage and a regenerative culture now and for the generations to come.