Wild Women Retreat

11 - 15 Jan 2027

 Overview

Wild Women: Create, Connect, Restore

Reconnect with what nourishes you, rediscover what brings you joy and peace, and explore practical ways to carry more of both into everyday life.

Dates: 11 - 15 Jan 2027 (4 nights/ 4 days)

Location: Hindmarsh Island, South Australia

Facilitator: Jan Carey, Director - Centre for Mindful Education. Author – Wild Stillness: A Journey into Mindfulness, Creativity, and the Sacred Wisdom of Nature

Wild Women: Create, Connect, Restore is an invitation to begin 2027 with space to notice, reflect and choose more consciously how you want to move through the year ahead. Over several summer days on the waterfront at Hindmarsh Island, we’ll step away from our usual routines and explore what helps us return to a greater sense of joy, peace, presence and connection.

Through the Wild Stillness approach of nature, creativity, mindfulness, place, reflection and shared experience, we’ll explore questions such as:

  • What genuinely restores and nourishes me?

  • What helps me find calm when life feels demanding?

  • Where do I experience joy, curiosity and creative energy?

  • What do I notice about myself when I slow down and pay attention?

  • What do I want to make more space for in the year ahead?

This will be a retreat to experience these questions rather than simply talk about them.

We’ll meditate, create, spend time beside and on the water, explore the Coorong, share meals and meaningful conversations, and use art and nature as different ways of listening to ourselves.

The intention is that you leave refreshed, but also knowing yourself a little better: clearer about what nourishes you, more aware of the ways you can find your way back to yourself, and with practical intentions for creating more space for joy, creativity and peace throughout 2027.

A few days away. A deeper connection with yourself. And a more conscious way to begin the year ahead.

Your Canvas of Becoming

At the creative heart of the retreat will be a personal Canvas of Becoming — an artwork that grows slowly across our days together.

Rather than creating one finished piece in a single session, we’ll build the canvas in layers, using different creative processes from the retreat: intuitive painting, cyanotype, nature printing, paper marbling, collage, block printing, text and mark-making.

Each layer becomes a way of noticing. You do not need any artistic skills. Our focus is… What happens when you follow curiosity rather than trying to make something “right”?

As the retreat unfolds, your canvas will begin to hold traces of the experience — the landscape, creative discoveries, reflections, emotions and intentions that matter to you.

By the end, it becomes more than an artwork. It becomes a visual reminder of what you have noticed about yourself, what restores and nourishes you, and what you want to make more room for in the year ahead.

Our Creative Art Experiences

Botanical Printing

Leaves, grasses and other natural textures become our printing tools. As we look more closely at the forms around us, we practise noticing what might otherwise be overlooked and bring impressions of place directly into our artwork.

Intuitive Painting

Begin with colour, movement and instinct rather than a plan. Intuitive painting invites us to loosen expectations, notice what we are drawn to and practise trusting our own responses — creating the first expressive layers of our Canvas of Becoming.

Paper Marbling

Marbling is an invitation to experiment with movement, colour and unpredictability. As patterns shift and emerge beyond our control, we can practise curiosity and enjoy responding to what unfolds rather than trying to determine the outcome.

Block Printing

Working with repeated shapes, symbols and patterns gives us a chance to explore the marks that feel meaningful to us. These printed elements can become part of our canvas — a personal visual language developing across the retreat.

Collage Making

Collage allows us to gather fragments — handmade papers, prints, images, words and textures — and discover new relationships between them. It becomes a way of choosing what speaks to us and bringing different parts of our experience together.

Cyanotype Printing

Using sunlight and natural forms, cyanotype asks us to slow down and pay attention to shape, shadow and detail. The beautiful blue prints we create can become fragments within our canvas, holding something of the landscape and the moment in which they were made.

Our Immersive Experiences

Mindful Meditation

Meditation creates space to pause and notice what is happening within us. Through simple mindfulness practices, we’ll explore breath, body, thoughts and emotions with greater awareness, developing ways to return to steadiness and presence.

Time in Nature

Unhurried time outdoors gives us space to notice differently. Walking, sitting, observing, sketching or simply being outside can help quiet the constant pull of attention and deepen our connection with both place and self.

Group Sessions & Connections

Our facilitated group sessions will create space to explore what we are noticing about ourselves throughout the retreat. Through guided questions and shared reflection, we can become more aware of patterns, emotions, needs and the things that help us feel grounded and connected.

Coorong Cruise Experience

We will cruise downstream from the port of Goolwa along the historic wharf & towards the Goolwa Barrage. Water, birdlife, changing light and the meeting of river, wetland and ocean invite us to observe deeply and reconnect with the wider landscape around us.

Shared Meals

Gathering around the table is part of the retreat experience too. Shared vegetarian meals create relaxed spaces for conversation, laughter and connection, helping the group grow naturally through the ordinary pleasure of eating together.

A Local Lunch Out

A local lunch out offers a change of rhythm and a chance to enjoy the local area together. It adds a sense of ease and celebration, giving space simply to enjoy each other’s company.

Where We’ll Stay

Our home for the retreat is a beautiful waterfront property in Coorong Quays Marina Estate on Hindmarsh Island. Newly built, spacious and filled with natural light, it gives us the perfect balance of shared space, comfort and quiet places to retreat to.

With open-plan living, a fully equipped kitchen and expansive views across the water, it feels both luxurious and relaxed — an ideal base for creating, connecting, sharing meals and simply enjoying the slower rhythm of the days. All linen will be provided.

Indoor Outdoor Living

Surrounded by the waterways of Coorong Quays, the property offers a real sense of escape. Water, open sky and changing light become part of the retreat experience itself.

Comfortable Bedrooms

The bedrooms are light, calm and comfortable, with most rooms shared between two women. A small number of private single-room options are available. Bathrooms are also shared.

A Beautiful Waterside Setting

The large lawns lead directly towards the water, creating beautiful spaces for meditation, quiet reflection, creative time or simply sitting with a cup of tea and taking in the view.

Spacious Shared Living

The open-plan lounge, dining and kitchen area gives us plenty of room to gather together — for meals, conversations, creative work and relaxed evenings.

Why Wild Women

Wild Women has grown from something I have witnessed again and again in retreats: when women are given time and space to slow down together, something meaningful happens. Different lives and stories begin to reveal shared threads — around joy, creativity, courage, self-trust, voice, belonging and making space for ourselves within full lives. There is something powerful in being able to share honestly, listen deeply, laugh, create and recognise parts of our own experience in one another.

Wild Women creates space for that connection, while allowing each woman to follow her own path.

Some of the most meaningful moments on retreat happen naturally — in the conversations between sessions, the laughter around the table, the honesty that grows as trust builds, and the feeling of being seen and understood by other women. Alongside our facilitated group sessions, there will be plenty of space for these connections to unfold, creating the kind of friendships and shared memories that often become one of the most treasured parts of the experience.

About Your Guide

Jan Carey is an educator, author, retreat facilitator and creative practitioner whose work brings together mindfulness, expressive arts, nature, place and meaningful human connection. With more than 30 years in education and school leadership, Jan has spent many years exploring how awareness, creativity and connection can support the way we live, learn and relate to ourselves and others.

Jan is the founder and author of Wild Stillness. Her approach has been shaped by her own life — from living on a 46-acre bushland property in the Adelaide Hills to many years of living, working and volunteering in India, particularly Tamil Nadu. Through meditation, nature-based creative practice, art-making and immersive experiences of place, she creates retreats that invite people to slow down, notice more deeply and reconnect with what matters.

Jan has facilitated retreats, workshops and trainings across Australia and internationally in India and Bali, weaving together mindfulness, creativity, cultural immersion, nature and shared experience. Her work is grounded, experiential and gently reflective — creating space for people to explore, make, notice, connect and discover their own way forward.

Inclusions

  • Staying in a beautiful waterfront property in Coorong Quays Marina Estate on Hindmarsh Island

  • These meals are included.

    • 4 Breakfast

    • 3 lunches

    • 4 Dinners

    Dietary needs will be catered for as best as possible.

  • All art materials and immersive activities as mentioned plus…

    • Coorong River Cruise

  • The entire journey and all activities are guided by expert facilitators. You are in safe hands x

Cost

All inclusive package for 4 nights: Arriving Monday 11 Jan at 2pm - Departing Friday 15 Jan at 10am

Shared room = $1495 AUD

Single occupancy room (very limited) = $1795 AUD

Group Size

We prefer to keep our retreats and Journeys group size to a maximum of 11 people.

Please note in the past our retreats have sold out. We cannot hold places without full payment.

Bookings will be taken as first bookings only.

A minimum of eight participants is required for the retreat to proceed. In the unlikely event that minimum numbers are not reached, all retreat payments will be refunded in full.

Much gratitude, Jan

Not Included

  • One lunchtime we will dine at a local restaurant or hotel. Meal and drinks at your own expense.

  • We are happy to facilitate requests for shared driving to and from the retreat if needed.

    We will also travel to nearby venues for our pottery workshop and river cruise. Shared transport will be encouraged.

##Bookings OPEN SOON ##

Please complete the attached Booking Form and email to centreformindfuleducation@gmail.com

A detailed itinerary plus additional information about what to expect will be sent upon booking.

Payment Details

Account: Centre for Mindful Education Pty Ltd
BSB: 015 237
Account Number: 304 285 869

To Book

Cancellation & Transfer Policy

Because our retreats and journeys are offered as a small group experience, all bookings are confirmed through full payment and are non-refundable. Once your place is secured, that space is reserved especially for you.

If you are unable to attend, you are very welcome to transfer your booking to another person of your choosing, subject to suitability and final confirmation. This approach helps keep the journey fair, sustainable, and accessible for everyone involved, while honouring the care and commitment required to hold a small-group experience.

If you have any questions or concerns before booking, I warmly encourage you to reach out so we can explore whether this retreat feels like the right fit for you at this time.