The Ancient Mother in the Otways: An Imaginative Ecotherapy Way of Seeing Place
- Marion Miller
- 13 hours ago
- 9 min read
Life at the Boonah farm slows down, and after spending a large portion of my life in inner-city Melbourne, the change is dramatic. Perhaps it is the down-regulation of the nervous system you notice first, but it is also the environment, which is mostly wild, that has its own pace and presence, and somehow we become attuned. In the city, my ecotherapy practice was about actively remaking a small space, clearing away the manicured grass to invite the wild back in. But here at the farm, the wild is already the dominant sovereign and it really is a holistic retreat into the wilderness. My role here has shifted from creator to listener; I am simply learning to step into a rhythm that was established long before I arrived. I remember on one of my first visits here, I was struck by how much it felt like a deep meditation just being here, and others have commented the same. The experience brings a profound realisation of how much the land shapes and nurtures us. Not the land we find ourselves in now but also our ancestral land and nature lineage.
A couple of years ago, I developed a group Ecotherapy pilot program I ran with a small group of women called Connection to Place. At the time, I was living near a freeway, tram, and train line. It was a busy spot, but I was fortunate to have a garden I had rewilded with native and indigenous plants. The program was born out of the experience of spending a lot more time in that garden, and through gardening, getting to know the place more intimately. To be honest that is when I also realised I need to get out of the city and back to the wild. It's true what they say about the rewilding movement and that through the process the psyche is also rewilded. One of the activities I did at the Glen Iris Studio was removing the grass, which in a sense was like decolonising the land (and my mind)—removing the ground cover to plant not just for humans, but for the native birds and insects which returned after some time. The course was my first deep dive into guiding a community into exploring a deeper relationship with nature and their surrounding environments. It also had creative elements, which I think is a lovely way to support us in reclaiming our connection because creative arts practice bypasses the conscious mind and taps into intuition and instinct. Now that we are spending more and more time on the land these activities and ways of being are front of mind and I am slowly beginning to work on a new evolved version of the Connection to place weaving together insights from the land and Eco-Dharma.
Boonah farm and the wild, misty ranges in particular have a distinct feel, and I have found myself starting to develop a closer relationship with her. When I arrive home, I acknowledge her as the sovereign and guardian of the wilderness here. I often find throughout the days I am staring out at her listening deeply, I often speak with her and at times I feel her looking back at me. She is so large and unwavering in her stillness, and because of this, there is a real sense of wisdom permeating her presence. Sometimes she is hidden in the clouds and looks otherworldly, wrapped in a shifting shroud of mist. Quite often there are high winds and rain. During our first autumn, there were patches of sun shining across her range that looked heavenly and ethereal. Summer is yet to come.
It's not just the ranges I have been getting to know; there are individual trees on the land who have their own sense of presence. A large Manna Gum tree sits at the bottom of the steepest paddock—she must be more than a hundred years old. The trees on the paddocks are elders, and there are about four I am getting to know particularly intimately. Sit spots are a great way to develop a relationship with place, and every time we walk the land, we muse about where all the best sit spots are. I have a few favorites already. The other week, I was tucked away down the very back of the land close to the bushland, sitting quietly on my own, when I heard a loud brushing sound through the bush which kept me on my toes and alert to the wild. It must have been a large kangaroo or even a deer as it sounded higher up off the ground. Individual trees are wonderful to get to know, but the collective trees and rock ranges of Boonah farm are a powerful presence that sits quietly at the back, as if holding the whole place together.
I find myself wondering about the old pre-Christian, Celtic archetype, the Cailleach present in the ranges. Recently I heard Sharon Blackie a mythologist and psychologist in Ireland speak of when she lived in the USA she found her archetypes in the landscape there. If you've not heard of the Calileach she dates back to the indigenous spirituality of the British isles. Before the Caileach was captured in ink, she lived for millennia in the oral, Gaelic tradition, deeply embedded in the physical geography of some of my ancestors in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of man where some of Richard's family are from. The Gaelic traditions can also be found in France and Germany. The stories of the Cailleach reveal a primordial, animistic worldview; in the oral lore of both Ireland and Scotland, she is the original builder of the earth. The oral stories say this divine feminine strode across the land during the creation epoch, carrying giant boulders in her apron or her wicker basket. When her apron strings snapped, the rocks spilled out, instantly forming the mountains and islands. The Cailleach is a healer, a shaper of the land, a bringer of weather, the goddess of death and sovereignty, and the goddess of ancestors and place.
B.L. Chaika, a writer for Earth Sanctuaries, tells of a journey to Ireland where a local caretaker pointed out the magic mushrooms growing in the displaced native grasses of a stone circle—recalling an ancient era when cows grazed on these fungi and produced a dream-inducing milk that birthed Ireland’s mythic songs, stories, and fairy sightings. This thread of ancient dreaming led them south to the Hag of Beara, a massive boulder on a hillside above Coulagh Bay that local legend holds as the petrified face of the Cailleach herself, a sovereign goddess who supposedly turned to stone while awaiting her sea-god husband through seven lifetimes. Yet, perched just above this ancient stone sits a later Christian church, marking a physical and cultural displacement where a local saint allegedly petrified the defiant goddess to suppress her power—abruptly awakening humanity from the sacred dream of an animate Earth. This profound erosion of the divine feminine is nowhere more poignantly captured than in the 9th-century Irish poem The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare, where the Cailleach mourns her lost youth, wild freedom, and cyclical renewal, now shriveled and cloistered beneath the restrictive veil of a Christian nun.
In If Women Rose Rooted, Sharon Blackie speaks of the Cailleach not as a symbol of withered decay, but as the ultimate archetype of the rooted, sovereign woman—the guardian of the wild who teaches us what it means to truly belong to a place. Blackie suggests that the Cailleach represents a fierce, unyielding attachment to the earth, reminding us that our relationship with the land isn’t meant to be passive or romanticized, but deeply embedded and protective. She is the old woman who knows the stories of the rocks and the trees because she has survived the winters of time. By tuning into her energy, Blackie argues, women can reclaim their own ancient power, stepping out of modern displacement and back into the sacred, animated dreaming of the landscape we inhabit. How wonderful it is to take nature-based spiritual guidance on mother earth from a woman and in a way that is not in competition or at the exclusion of men. This is an eco-feminist worldview that makes sense to me.
The presence of the Otway range is captured in the story of the Cailleach; the landscape is all those things and more. But as I look out at these ridges, I am reminded that the dream of the Earth is resilient. I was surprised to learn from a local farmer now in his 90s whose grandfather established a mill nextdoor in the 1890s, that 43 years ago, during the horrific Ash Wednesday bushfire of 1983, the range and the former house on this land were completely razed to the ground. Our ancient Manna Gum and a few other large species at the bottom of the paddock stood witness to it all, surviving the flames to become a living bridge between the ash of the past and the canopy of the present. Today, the range stands lush, green, and well-established—a living testament to an ancient, animate consciousness that knows how to regenerate, outlive loss, and rewrite its own story across time. The divine feminine energy of the land cannot be permanently displaced by a church or patriarchy, nor can it be destroyed by fire or flood.
This deep, enduring resilience of the land mirrors a profound teaching in ancient Eastern lore too, famously captured by Zen Master Dogen in his Mountains and Waters Sutra. Dogen wrote that mountains and trees are not inanimate objects, but are themselves ancient, walking buddhas—constantly expressing the truth of reality through their silent presence. In the Buddhist Eco-Dharma tradition, we learn that when we sit still enough, the illusion of a separate "self" begins to dissolve, and we realise we do not exist apart from nature, but as nature. The Manna Gum and the sweeping ridges of the Otways are practicing this continuous, silent meditation every day. They remind us that the awakening we seek in mindfulness practices isn't found by escaping our world, but by turning toward it, recognising that the earth beneath us is already fully awake, holding the space for our own nervous systems to rest.
If landscape were a storyteller, the foothills, ancient temperate rainforests, deep gullies, and weather-beaten ridges of the Otways hold that exact same ancient, dense, maternal presence. By recognising the "Cailleach energy" in the Otway ranges, we are acknowledging a universal archetype of the Old Wild Mother manifesting in a unique local ecology. Unlike the restrictive, heavy veil forced upon the shrivelled nun in the Old Irish poem, the misty veil of clouds that frequently wraps itself around the Otways feels like a choice—a sovereign retreat into her own sacred, otherworldly stillness.
To hold the Otways as the Cailleach is a powerful act of active imagination, but I acknowledge this hand-in-hand with a deep reverence for the living sovereignty of the First Nations people who have always belonged to this Country. Long before European stories crossed the ocean and settled here, the Gadubanud (King Parrot people) and the Eastern Maar nation lived in intimate reciprocity with these very ridges, knowing them as a living, protective sanctuary born of deep geological time. Two vastly different cultural streams, separated by oceans, arrived at the exact same truth: this landscape is an animate, sacred entity that demands we drop our human agendas and move at the speed of the seasons. Tuning into plant consciousness here means listening not just to the archetype in our own bloodlines, but honouring the ancient, unbroken custodial stories that still hum through the soil beneath our feet.
While at Boonah farm, we are invited to slow to the speed of stone—just like the Cailleach, who operates on deep, geological time. To tune into plant consciousness, we have to drop out of our hurried "hustle culture" timelines. Our current culture has no time. There is so much pressure and stress that we struggle to be idle, but the farm offers us the chance to slow down and realise a different way of being. In this way, nature is nurture. You may like to explore the practice of sit spots in your own garden or local park.
The Ecotherapy Practice of Sitting: I encourage you to choose a single local tree, large rock, or patch of bush and simply sit with it without an agenda. Over time, as we observe its seasonal shifts, its responses to weather, and the community of insects and fungi it supports, we stop viewing the plant as an "object" and begin to feel it as a living being with its own awareness, intelligence, and history.
When I look at the ridges of the Otways, I am tapping into a similar ancient, impulse that the old Gaels had when they looked at their glens. They didn't see resources to be extracted; they saw an old woman herding her deer, dropping stones from her apron, demanding that humans move at the speed of the seasons. These myths inspired a reciprocal relationship with the land and creative expressions of the Caileach can be found in many history books, art works and in our own imaginations. Imagining the Otway Ranges as the Cailleach isn't just a metaphor; it is an active, imaginative bridge that allows our human minds to perceive a grander, slow-moving intelligence. By holding the Otways as an ancient, weathered, sovereign grandmother figure, we shift from looking at the forest to sitting with an elder. I do love to sit with a wise elder!
