Thrive Rewild Quest 8 day survival trip

THRIVE rewild QUEST

next thrive rewild quest TBA, 2025, budawangs, south coast NSW

Thrive Rewild Quest is a small facilitated and guided Survival Quest programme, with a limit of twelve participants. You don't need any wilderness survival experience, however you do need an attitude of willingness to meet challenges, including being out in the elements with very minimal gear, sleeping on the ground, walking in the wild, working together with your fellow villagers to make shelter and gather food, while living on reduced calories for five days and nights, with minimal sleep. If that sounds tough, it is... and it's also one of the most rewarding and life changing things you will ever do in your life. Humans don't change in times of comfort, we transform by meeting our edges and learning our strengths by needing them. This programme will give you resilience you didn't know you possessed, a sense of oneness with nature, it will increase your skills and abilities to be in any survival situation and boost your connection with all living things, especially your fellow villagers. Most people can only dream of this kind of experience.

Thrive tends to book out, so if you're called, get your application form in asap. Once we've approved your application and you've paid your deposit, we can get you started with your preparation. If you're called, if the idea of this gets under your skin like an itch you can't scratch, with a sense of... god yes, that's me... even if you've never done anything like this before, feel free to get in touch. We're all hunter gatherers, in our DNA. Sometimes we just need to take off civilisation like a jumper that's too tight, feel the dirt under our bare feet, sleep under stars, cook on a fire in a clay pot we made ourselves, eating food we gathered with our own hands for a few days, to remember who we really are.

Wild Heart runs rewilding programmes on the NSW South Coast. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this area, the Dharawal, Jerrinja and Yuin people. We acknowledge traditional custodians of the entire continent. We ask permission to help people, in the ways that way can, to help us all deepen into our relationship with the living earth and abilities to walk with respect and deep listening.

We walk on stolen land and know that sovereignty was never ceded.

THRIVE Quest Application form

What is 'Thrive' ReWild Quest?

How do I even begin to explain this adventure? It's so epic I can barely type. Ok, breathe, Gigi, and use your words...
Thrive is an 8 day long village Quest with 5 of those days and nights spent out in the wilderness, exploring survival on the move, hunter-gatherer style.

Picture this.
Our group has 12 adults plus four facilitators. Each of us wearing only a bathing costume with a woollen blanket for warmth, and carrying one survival item (fishing line and hooks, knife, billy, cordage, hatchet, etc), plus some limited calories. There will be periods of activity and periods of rest, as we fall into the natural rhythm of a wandering band.

The Budawang Wilderness Area is a vast area encompassing spectacular sandstone cliffs and gorges, river flats, and pristine waterways. We'll be welcomed to country by indigenous elders, and spend a day and a half at base camp preparing for our adventure, working on our physical, mental, emotional and awareness skills, while weaving the social basket to support us as we create our village.

We will be gathering food in permitted areas using fishing, spear fishing, trapping, foraging and gathering. Each person can bring a small amount of calories per day and we will hunt and gather the rest. We have to work together, as a village on the move. We'll walk about 5km into the wilderness, carrying everything we need and gathering shelter building materials along the way. Once we decide on a site, we build a shelter and create our village for five days and nights.
When we're done, we break down the shelter, camouflaging the area back so you'd never know we were there, before walking back to base camp for a day of integration, reintroduction of food and gentle rest, taking time in our landing so we're ready to move back into our lives enriched and changed by our wild adventure.

Think Survivor, but friendly, with heart and connection, where we all look after each other. You don't need boss primitive survival skills, although some fitness and resilience is necessary, as this will be emotionally and physically strenuous. You do need a willingness to be part of a group, solving problems together, while overcoming some physical challenges. It's amazing what humans can accomplish in a group, and we're here to support you all the way.

How do we keep ourselves warm and dry? How do we find food and water on the landscape? How do we support each other using ancient social technologies to function as a healthy community in a survival situation? How do we find the exquisite joy that comes from being connected to the landscape as a functioning cell in the body of big mama earth? How do we balance the need for doing with the need for being? How do we unearth our gifts, the unique qualities we bring to the village?

Whether you are an artist, a hunter, a healer, a protector, whether you create useful things with your hands or keep everyone laughing when things fall apart... everyone has a place, everyone is a jigsaw puzzle piece with their own perfect shape in the group. This is the chance to discover what that is, not as a concept, but as a real, embodied experience.

From the purely practical to the emotional, from the mental to the metaphysical, this Quest will stretch you to your edges, which is where transformation happens. Any Quest is where we find out who and what we really are.

We work with local indigenous elders and cultural caretakers to ensure cultural sites are respected, our impact on the land is minimal, and that the programme has cultural sensitivity and respect. The programme begins with a welcome to country and cultural talk, plus bushfoods walk and story sharing by Budawang Yuin elder Uncle Noel Butler and his partner Aunty Trish. We aim to walk in right relationship with this beautiful land, its traditional owners and each other. We are committed to deep relationship with traditional custodians, and a culture of sharing and acknowledgement. We also acknowledge that if we make mistakes, it is through our own ignorance, not wilfulness, and we will take every step to learn and build bridges of respect.

We thank the traditional owners of this area, and the south coast of NSW where we run our programmes: the Yuin, Dharawal, and Jerrinja people, and acknowledge that ownership of traditional lands was never ceded.

Supported by Gina and Lee with daily gentle check in circles, emotional processing guidance and ongoing practical skills this Quest gives you ample opportunity to deepen into skills of tracking, foraging, fishing, spear fishing, deep nature connection, bush tucker, weather watching, fire by friction, shelter building, basketmaking and primitive pottery, plus resilience, emotional processing, problem solving and anything else that comes up on the Quest.

It also is a way to prepare for transition times and emergencies in our rapidly changing world.

Does this Quest call to you, like a scratch under your skin from the wild parts of you? Does it whisper, deep down in your belly, in the places where you dare to dream, before your mind comes in with all the reasons why you can't do this? If you are so called, but for some reason you think you can't do this... fitness, age, whatever it is... please get in touch. We mentor people of all ages, skills and experience into wilderness connection, and you'd be surprised at the people who do our programmes. Our last survival Quest saw a 60 year old woman join us... and in many ways she left the younguns behind! We have people who've never even camped have beautiful experiences in the wild places with us. We are committed to helping people be at home in the wild. We'll honestly evaluate and reflect so whatever decision you make, it will be in your rightness.

For more general information, or to chat about your skills and suitability, email me on [email protected] to arrange an interview.

How do I sign up and how much is it?

There are limited places in Thrive. Once you have filled out the application form, we'll let you know if you have been accepted within a week. Once you've been accepted and paid the deposit you'll receive all further information on preparation.
Cost is $1690 for the full 8 day Quest. There's a $500 deposit to hold your place once your application has been approved. This can be fully refunded up to four weeks prior to the Quest. Between 2 and 4 weeks prior to the Quest $200 can be refunded. Closer than two weeks to Quest there are no refunds unless your place is filled.
If you are keen, get your application in. This will book out!

See you in the wild places,
Lots of love

Gina (Gigi)

thrive rewild quest application

Your facilitators for Thrive 2024

Hi, I'm Gina Chick. I've been facilitating Rewilding for kids, families and adults in Australia for 15 years, and facilitating personal transformation through somatic therapies for 30 years.

My approach to ancestral survival skills is based on understanding and embodying deep resilience, connection with country, creative problem solving and the ongoing healing of wounds of connection to create a heartset of receptivity. In my experience, by bringing these factors to bear, solutions to the challenges of shelter, water, fire and food arise in a holistic way, in deep connection with the natural world, where we get our needs met like any other living creature in the web of life. Physical skills of survival are a necessary part of this balance, but are not the only thing.

This year at Thrive, I am delighted to be supported by Eva, Will and Clay from Wild Beings.

Wild Heart and Bluegum Bushcraft acknowledge the traditional owners of the south coast, the Dharawal, Jerrinja and Yuin nations, including the Budawang Yuin people.
We acknowledge the displaced indigenous custodians of all Australian country. We give respect to elders past present and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty of this land was never ceded.