Meeting the truth through the heart
Desert Pilgrimage
Welcome to the heart of the country,
You are invited into the ancient lands of the central desert, the heart of this country. For seven days we will gather sitting in circle, sleeping under the stars and traversing to different Indigenous clans to listen and learn from the oldest living culture in the world. Together, we will come to meet the truth, feel the truth and be transformed by the truth of this land and it’s people. This is not just about our past and our colonial impacts, it’s also about our power and our healing, coming back to our own true nature.
Together we will traverse the beauty of the desert, open our senses, weather the elements, decolonise our minds and return to our wild soul. It’s a pilgrimage into the heart of our humanity.
Accommodation
We will be bush camping, sleeping in swags under the stars round the fire.
There are showers and toilets most nights but no kitchen facilities.
Food
We organise meals together cooking on the fire.
We will have a cook and be supplying the food which will be basic and mostly vegan.
When we share meals with the local Indigenous women you have the option to eat their traditional foods of kangaroo and root vegetables cooked a ground oven. Other bush tucker we collect will also be on the menu.
Flights
Fly in and out of Alice Springs airport
I'll collect you from the airport
For cheaper flights you can arrange to come earlier or leave later.
2nd-9th September 2024
Alice Springs, NT
This has been 7 years in the making and will be the first gathering of it's kind. Further details of cost and dates coming soon.
We acknowledge the Arrernte, Western Arrernte & Kaytej people as the Custodians of the lands we will journey on together.
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The Journey
Coming on to Country
You’ll be welcomed in to the group who will become family as we travel together. Our first destination will be to sacred women’s country where we will set up for two nights.
We will have a traditional welcome to country where we will be smoked and blessed for our journey. You’ll also learn about local protocol so that we can connect with custodians respectfully.
Sacred and Scarred Places
Within the Alice Springs area there are many sacred women’s sites that are now heavily touristed areas. We will experience the impacts of colonisation both through the changing of country and the removal of people from their communities over the last 200 years.
Sitting with Custodians
We will sit with women on their country north of Alice Springs. Here we will gather bush tucker, listen to their stories round the fire and share in a traditional meal together. This will be a deeply immersive cultural experience where we go into community seeing the reality of how these people live.
Sitting on Country
Listening to country in the silence of stillness, we will spend the day opening our senses to the more than human world. This is a day to take in the beauty of this land, to feel her holding and her power.
Dreaming
Colonisers dream their own dream, Indigenous dream the Earths dream.
By now, we’ve spent enough nights under the stars on country to know to our core, that we a part of the Earth, not seperate or above her. We will sit with an elder our last night to experience her dreaming paintings and the stories behind them. Art speaks what words cannot. You will also have the opportunity to buy these rare paintings straight from the artist herself.
Walking Together
Release your expectations of everything going according to plan. We are working directly with cultural women, where their family comes first and so does their health. We are also in the elements and working within cultural protocols.
The Power of Circle
Each day we will be held in circle, sharing our personal experience of the journey. Each one holding threads of wisdom that we collectively weave together in a tapestry of remembering. In circle we are all equal, all holding each other in gentle witnessing and listening. The ethos of circle is at the core of all Gather journeys, we are simply walking each other home.
Truth to Transformation
Story changes us, it speaks to our shared humanity. This is a journey of stories, of struggle, of resilience, of ancient, of dreamtime, of culture, of courage. Stories from each other, stories from cultural women, stories from elders, stories from country, stories of our history from ancient times to colonisation. The truth transforms us, not just our mind, but our heart.
Ripples of Change
I have seen how these gatherings create ripples of change. When we sit with these people in a way that is truely authentic to them, there is a bond created through empathy, through our heart connection. It’s this bond that stays with us, it is not the experience that changes us, it’s the relationships. I have seen women returning from these trips whole heartedly turn their focus towards walking with custodians within their local area. I have seen every one of these women return with stories that have left them changed forever. You can never unhear or unsee truth, it stays with you for life and imparts a wisdom that gives you the power to speak and live more closely to your deepest nature. It’s this deep nature that returns us to belonging and restores our responsibilities to Country and humanity.
21 Day Pilgrimage
You can join the Kimberley Connection Gathering and the Desert Pilgrimage back to back. That means a 21 day pilgrimage of traversing the wild terrain from Kununurra to Alice Springs, a truely immersive and transformative experience, there’s no turning back from.
Those who join both gatherings will be invited to be on the crew for the desert pilgrimage where you will only be paying for your food, accomodation and cultural connection, the rest will be on me. The costs of the 1700km travel from Kununurra to Alice Springs will be divided between us all. It will be a convoy where I will provide most of the camping gear. The transport will be organised as a group deepending on how many women we are.