THE ECO
RETREAT
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, permaculture, organic farming, regenerative landcare and community well-being.
Meet the Custodians
We (Marion and Richard) are the founders of The Eco Retreat and the newest stewards of Boonah Farm, along with our whippet dog Lewis and our four daughters. Since arriving, we often feel it is the land that is stewarding us.
Our roots trace back to regional farming communities in remote Tasmania and the Adelaide Hills. Yet despite quiet 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.
We're quietly confidence we can learn how to weave our lives back into the land and at the same time share this wonderful journey with the communities we belong to. This is a long term dream that has manifest in ways far beyond our imaginations. But we can't do this alone and invite others to be actively involved in creating a wholesome vision for the future.
Marion is an ecotherapist, mindfulness teacher, artist and writer. Through community work, she helps people reconnect with nature, remembering our sacred relationship and finding social purpose from wise action in the changing world. She is a graduate of the Stonnington Eco Champion program and became active in wilding projects on public land and in her own backyard. Today, she manages The Eco Retreat. You can find out more about Marion's work 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. When he is not wrangling corporate life, Richard is focused on supporting green investment, living simply, learning about landcare, permaculture, birding and connecting to community life at Boonah Farm.
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 social 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, 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, permaculture, regenerative farming 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.
