Koora Retreat Centre - WA

A base camp on the edge of Boorabbin National Park, from which to experience the wilderness and explore desert spirituality.WHAT KOORA DOES: A. As well as base camp facilities we offer bush camping, standingcamp facilities, one caravan siteB. Bringing together groups in time set apart from their normal social arrangements allows for retreats, team-building, strategic planning, group and individual times of spiritual reflection and direction.C.Camp fire discussions bring up reflections on understandings of desert spirituality, corporate and personal journeys, experience of place, environmental and social justice issues and ways to address them locally when people return to their everyday lives.D. Delight in the environment and living in the present moment, combined with the availability of a range of materials allow for the creative energies of people to find expression. Music, art, poetry, pottery, dyeing, dance, camp-fire cooking and other forms of celebration also take form here in the remoteness from everyday life.E. Environmental awareness stimulates the desire and willingness to repair, restore or preserve local places of community historical interest, such as the Koorarawalyee rock harvest walls and reservoir of 1895 and the well sunk in the indigenous soak by Hunt’s exploration party in 1865F. Funding to enable the objects of the association is provided by rubbish removal, weeding and propagation to rehabilitate the land along the Kalgoorlie pipeline, pump station and in the Koorarawalyee Water Reserve. Recognition of this work has come in the form of being granted a 21 year Management Order over Koorarawalyee Water Reserve for the purpose of water and landscape protection, and being a 2009 finalist in the DEC Environment Awards.G. God is glorified in worship services that are based on the daily office, as a pattern to develop service relevant to this environment, with an all-inclusive understanding of God’s care for the world, and of the local environment as God’s creation.H. Historic landmarks and engineering fetes are part of the Koorarawalyee environment. please leave artifacts where you find them for future visitors to enjoy discovering the past.I. Indigenous custodial responsibilities are considered as Koora management committee plans any local initiative with the question, “What effect will this activity have on aboriginal culture, environment and heritage sites?” Koora has ongoing relationships with local indigenous people interested in this location.J. Juggling the everyday work listed above, and the coordination of the volunteers and contractors who undertake it, are Koora Retreat volunteer staff, Anglican priests Rev Dr Anna Killigrew and Rev Peter Harrison. Anna was an agricultural scientist and secondary teacher in a former life, and Peter was a civil engineer, so they are well qualified for the task. They are both licensed by the archbishop of Perth as Chaplains to Koora Retreat.K. Koora Retreat enables provision of a base camp from which to experience the wilderness and explore desert spirituality, alone and in communityL. Leading pilgrims on a journey into their own interior desert to seek and find God and their authentic selves there is the outcome.