People
Jane Hope
Jane Hope has lived at Gembrook Retreat for nearly 20 years and is a Quaker who seeks to follow the radical life of Christ. She works as a Spiritual Director, Retreat Guide, Mentor and facilitator of The Work That Reconnects.
She has found that her spiritual life has deepened by developing a greater connection to land, extended periods of contemplation and living a daily life of prayer and work. As her spiritual life continues to deepen everyday she is drawn to share and explore the spiritual life with others.
After spending two years in Brazil, learning from Indigenous communities as well as local Brazilian families, she has spent the last 20 years committed to building residential communities in Australia. She helped begin the Indigenous Hospitality House in 2001 and was a resident there for 3 years, before moving to Gembrook Retreat.
Jane refers to her work under the banner of Rewilding Christianity and describes her spiritual life as a wild adventure story that just keeps getting wilder. She would love to explore your own spiritual life through her work and discover where the mystery she calls God is woven into your life. While Jane fits well in the radical left of the Christian world, she loves to work with anyone who has an interest in the spiritual life, whatever their beliefs.
Samara Pitt
Samara has been involved with Gembrook Retreat since 2005, and moved to Gembrook to become a resident in early 2020. She is a Christian who has been influenced by the social justice and contemplative traditions of the church and has discovered that the life of faith just keeps going deeper and beyond any category we might use to describe it. She continues to ask what it means to live well in this particular place in light of our colonist history and current climate crisis, and is keen to be apprenticed by this land on the border of Bunurong/Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri country.
Samara met Jane and Steve Hope at the Indigenous Hospitality House in Carlton where she lived for 17 years, and she worked with Urban Seed in inner city Melbourne for 11 years, sharing stories about homelessness, addiction and stereotyping with high school students, plus a few years in operations. She does much of the admin work at Gembrook Retreat, takes the lead in anything involving singing and helps out with whatever else needs doing.
Steve Hope
Steve is a Quaker from England who got involved at Gembrook Retreat when he came to Melbourne and met Maggie Dunkle, the founder of the Retreat. He worked at a tree nursery in Gembrook for 20 years and does much of the land and building work at Gembrook Retreat. He is particularly interested in the regeneration of native bush, and creating ways for people to find a spiritual connection to the land.
Sharee Harper
Sharee is a Quaker who has been involved at Gembrook Retreat for over 20 years, at various times as a resident, volunteer and is currently President of Gembrook Retreat Inc. She is passionate about indigenous plants, revegetation and conservation and has taken the lead in developing the Quaker peace garden. She is actively involved in social justice, animal welfare and environmental concerns and is particularly interested in sharing Beth Gott's ethnobotanical work with First Peoples of South Eastern Australia as Beth considered it their Intellectual Property. Sharee is a strong advocate for Gembrook Retreat with her connections far and wide!
Josh Glover
Josh heard Joanna Macy's name on the lips of friends, mentors and podcast hosts before properly encountering the power of The Work that Reconnects at Gembrook Retreat. This first experience was profound. Transforming hopelessness into passion and inspiring him to speak up and act for a non-human world in crisis. He comes to Active Hope work with a decade of facilitation and community work experience.
Over that period he has facilitated workshops with over 5000 people, primarily drawing upon Rites of Passage frameworks. Most of this work has been through preventative mental health and emotional intelligence organisations The Man Cave and The Intersection. In these roles he has also conducted extensive program and workshop design as well as facilitation training and development.
He has been connected to Gembrook Retreat for 8 years, using it as a green refuge away from the hustle and bustle of Melbourne and falling more and more in love with the land there each day.
Shannon Ormiston
Since discovering The Work That Reconnects in 2020, Shannon has participated in numerous workshops, book clubs and programs involving Deep Ecology. She can't get enough! She says that this work offers an everyday attitude that is both gentle and practical. Applicable and essential to counteracting the late stage effects of Capitalism.
Shannon is a Quaker who works in the Melbourne Hills area and surrounds. She has lived in the community at Gembrook Retreat since 2021 after moving south from Queensland in 2019.
Shannon has traveled the world and lived in many climates, cultures and communities. She is passionate about gender equity, consent, peace building and truth telling.
Shannon is an eternal student and has studied faith, philosophy, psychology and occult sciences for over a decade. She is truly just curious about all of existence.
Talitha Fraser
A Ngāi Tahu/Pākeha settler on the lands of the peoples of the Kulin Nation, Talitha Fraser is theopoetic dabbler, urban contemplative and radical discipleship practitioner living in Footscray. She’s visited Gembrook many times over the past 15+ years for respite from community development work, rest, strategic planning days with community orgs, and her own writing retreats. She’s also come along to some of our harvest days and workshops.
Talitha is the Curator of The Recollective – a playground for reflection, culture, and feminist theologies. She is bringing this intersectional energy to some project work for Gembrook Retreat right now to promote our new Meeting House and other offerings to a wider audience.
Matt Bell
Matt has been visiting Gembrook Retreat for 20 years. More recently he has become involved in the Active Hope workshops. In the past he has helped build a fire pit, worked on the compost system and helped maintain a driveway. These days he visits to take some time out in nature, often by himself, sometimes with his wife. He also loves catching up with the Gembrook Retreat folk who he has known for a long time. Even though he lives in the city, he loves having Gembrook Retreat as a place where he can go and take time out.