With its protective mountains and mists, our sanctuary is truly a place of healing and peace. A sacred and holy place where every life is precious and worthy of respect, compassion, love and kindness.
.For us, sanctuary is about healing. It is about offering a peaceful, safe place of refuge for animals traumatised by the world of humans. Over the decades, we’ve given shelter to hundreds of animals, many of whom needed saving from horrible circumstances, such as being beaten, threatened with death, or starvation or torture. The physical and/or emotional state of so many of these animals has left us speechless. And to give them a safe haven and a holistic approach to recovery and renewal has always been our focus. To feel loved, safe, happy, healthy and content is the birthright of every being — and we not only go the extra mile for the ones in our care, we want to make the world a kinder place for the animals of tomorrow.
To create this Place of Peace, means meeting the needs of the different and unique individuals who come here. Many need the comfort of natural living with their own kind, while others need more intense care before they can be “free” with their mates. “Free” because while they might roam large paddocks in their normal social herds and flocks, they are fed twice a day! You can see the tension leave troubled animals when they arrive here because the peace and safety we create is tangible — so tangible that our hay delivery driver has commented on it, calling it “cosy”, and more than one sensitive artist friend has burst into spontaneous tears.
The main work we do here is healing. Often this is physical, like helping them recover from breaks, bruises, or the long-term effects of neglect. But also, this includes building trust and allowing a troubled soul to reset and give them the chance to stop spending their lives in fear of humans.
“Rehabilitation” is not a word we tend to use, even though it is definitely what we do.. But it’s a bit clinical for an environment focussed on peace and holistic healing. As well as the normal veterinary care, we also work to bring balance back to the nervous system of animals, helping them trust and relax, and address core issues holistically. We give them a place to be, a future to look forward to, friends, safety, and plenty of food.
We turn the broken into healed and happy.
And some of them are so very broken.
It is both a priviledge and an honour to see a horse with bleak fear in her eyes relax and come alive again, and then able to live well in the company of a natural herd. We see scraggly, terrified wild cats turn into cuddly companions with glossy coats, and frightened, nervous dogs find peace and confidence. This is the heart of what we do — and why.
Rehabilitation of every soul doesn’t stop with veterinary care. It’s not just about patching up the physical problems.. of which often there are many. It’s about tending and trust -building until they return to wholeness on every level. And that takes time and money.
We do this with tenderness, love, and a unique understanding of their perspective. We also use a wide range of healing modalities to support the animals’ minds, bodies, and souls.
By tellling their stories through teaching, talks, and books, we hope these animal tales will inspire humans and provide insight into how they, too, can improve the lives of their animal companions and all animals.
Below are some of the sanctuary’s wonderful stories of healing and rehabilitation. May they nurture your soul.
We received a call asking us if we had room for a wild horse who had been rescued from the knacker’s yards not once, but twice. She was in bad shape with stress laminitis and a bleak, dead look in her eyes. This stunning Kiandra Grey was ripped from her home and beloved equine family in the Snowy Mountains, “green-broke” (we shudder to think what she went through with that), and when considered unfit for a riding horse, dumped. A kind man and his daughter saved her, sold her and then found her back in the sale yards again, about to head off to become dog meat.
They knew it was time for her to find sanctuary. And so she came to us. We named her Pahara and the first job was to make her feel safe and deal with the pain in her hooves. It took months of work to heal not just her physical body, but her deep grief, sorrow, and fear as well.
Today,, to see her trusting, soft-eyed, sound in hoof and happy in a herd of three others, every moment and expense was worth it.
It was a terrible drought and we received many calls to take in horses that people could no longer care for. Big Mama and Bindi were mother and daughter standard breds, already rescued from the sale yards once. They couldn’t go back there. They needed a safe place to land as their person had sold their home, unable to hang on any longer. We could tell we were saving more than the animals by giving them a forever home in sanctuary.
Big Mama was skin and bone. We wondered if she had tooth problems or cancer . Or both. We wondered if we could bring her back.
We set to work on her physical care, had her checked out with various equine professionals, rebuilding her with nutritious food and with all kinds of supplements to recondition. On another more emotional level. we reassured her she was safe with her daughter for life. We encouraged her to live.
And slowly;y she recovered and became cheeky, lively, shiny and glossy once again, settling into a small herd with Bindi her daughter, another troubled soul Enya, and a handsome gelding called Goldie to protect them.
The drought brought us many horses as people couldn’t afford the steep rise in feed. Enya, a stock horse, was one of them. She was the sweetest girl ever but she came with a painful conformation, terrible hooves, and was pigeon -toed. She was in so much pain.
Our farrier dropped everything to come and give her relief. And she was so uncomfortable in her contorted body, she leaned heavily on Billie every time he came to do work. At first. Because she got so much better that in the end she could stand on her own like a normal horse, and accept her six week trim with a horsey smile. We also called out Equine therapists for special massage and treatment to help her with her conformation. It took our lovely farrier many months of patient work to get her hooves to something resembling normal. During that time, she was pampered with love and all kinds of gentle healing therapies.
She deserved it, being gentle-natured and exuding love despite her physical challenges.
And slowly, she healed to the best of her ability and was happily living in a smaller paddock with Big Mama, Bindi and Goldie the gelding who was totally in love with her. So she gained a devoted boyfriend as well as a healed body!!
Rhys was a young sheep about three months old who was blind and had a badly smashed leg (that’s his X-ray at the top of the page). We rushed him to the vet and had to fight for his life because they wondered why we might bother with a such damaged sheep, and they didn’t think he would survive the night with all their interventions.
We didn’t give up on him.
They splinted his leg, and we toook him home, where he recuperated inside with our wild cats and the heater.
A few days later, he had a massive surgery to plate his leg, conducted by beautiful veterinary specialists. We were told, to our delight, that Rhys was an instant favourite at the specialist’s practice. They all took turns checking on him and making sure he was OK. One nurse even went outside to pick some grass for him, which he ate from her hand.
Rhys is now completely healed. He lives with another young sheep for company, and loves coming for daily walks with us around the yard. Such a far cry from the broken, sad sheep we didn’t know would survive 24 hours.
Lulu the sheep was discarded and left to die on the side of the road — for days. She was dying, with white gums and legs that were cold to the touch.
But when we brought her in for healing and safety, tending to her and offering food and water, she rallied. We kept expecting her to pass away, but she kept getting stronger. She couldn’t walk, so we did physical therapy for her legs.
A month later, she surprised us by giving birth to a tiny baby boy (that’s him in the photos). We had to take the newborn inside as a poddy lamb because Lulu couldn’t care for him.
She passed away with a peaceful sigh when she saw him safe and content in Billie’s arms. We were all amazed at her fight and tenacity to hold on and hold on and hold on until she was able to bring the life inside her into the world.
We called the baby The Professor, and he is growing up in the house with the dogs and cats — bright, boisterous, healthy, and happy.
We received a call asking us to take in “the most scared dog” the woman had ever met.
We’d never met a dog like him.
Fenn was terrified of anyone in a coat, of men, and of humans in general. He shook for several nights until he realized he was safe. Billie held him all night until he slept. But for years, if Andrew walked into the room, it would be too much for him, and he would find a way to be somewhere else. If visitors came to the sanctuary, he would bark as loudly as he could, and if he saw a chance, he’d run off to hide somewhere in the paddock or down by the creek, only returning when he felt it was safe to do so.
It took Fenn years to learn to trust.
But that was OK with us. We did our best to give him the space to heal in a way that was suited to him.
He has now completely bonded with Billie, shadowing her everywhere. With patience and love, he’s come around and has become a well-adjusted member of the pack.
When the council closed the local tip, they began trapping all the cats and taking them to the vet for euthanasia — until we stepped in and offered to take the cats to the sanctuary.
Wild, terrified, and often unhealthy, we nursed them back to wholeness, got them sound and trusting, and desexed them. They lived happily ever after. They came to love clean blankets (changed daily), lots of food, scampering around the house, climbing around, and sleeping in contented family heaps.
While we’ve taken cats from a number of pounds, bringing them back from disease and fear, these days, we’ve focussed mainly on wild cats who have been trapped, as they are harder to find homes for, even though, with time, we know they can make wonderful companions.
We were Willow’s third home, and it wasn’t hard to see why. She was a deaf, epileptic Great Dane x Mastiff, and she was a dog whose personality filled the room. She barked — super loud barking — but because she was deaf, she had no concept of what it was like for everyone around her.
And the seizures? They were the full-on, grand mal type that included voiding every opening and scrabbling. The seizures were resistant to everything we tried (until, that is, we found a treatment that worked — a particular diet called the GARD diet).
We taught Willow sign language so we could communicate with her, and gave her what she needed: a secure home with a pack, living inside instead of alone outside.
We helped her through many, many health challenges, sometime joking that she was vying to be the world’s most expensive dog, given the scope of her vet bills for treating everything from her epilepsy to a blockage in her stomach from something she ate to very a large tumor.
Eventually, Willow passed away at the age of 14, which was a remarkable accomplishment on her part given her size, breeding, and year’s of challenges. But when she went, she was, amazingly, epilepsy- and cancer-free.
Willow even starred in our films Finding Joy and Seven Days with Seven Dogs alongside her pack mates, just being her beautiful self.
The call came from Social Services. Could we take on a dog from a domestic violence situation? The woman wouldn’t leave her terrible situation until she knew her dog would be safe. Other rescues wouldn’t take the dog because he was too old.
We said yes, saving two lives.
When Dusty arrived, he was an emotional wreck. He clung to Andrew like there was no tomorrow. We spent thousands of dollars on vet care to repair all kinds of wounds, including a perforated diaphragm and associated floating organs caused by being thrown across a room — and who knows what else.
But Dusty was a survivor, and that’s exactly what he did. He spent his last years in gentleness and peace, in a loving home, with the light returning to his cataract-riddled, old brown eyes.
Marley was a sick, old Staffy, just minutes away from being killed at the pound. We took him in, along with 23 cats that day.
The cats were nursed back to health and rehomed, but Marley, being older and more frail in mind, body, and emotion, got to simply relax with the pack.
He enjoyed his life of safety and love until he passed peacefully several years later.
We have so many stories involving broken ex-racehorses. Each one who came to us did so with emotional and physical scars. Typical was Rupert, who “went ballistic” when ridden, and who had a reputation for being dangerous. But there were others — the ones with terrible hooves, the ones who didn’t trust, the ones who just weren’t good enough at the track, so were discarded.
We brought them back to health and turned them out into a paddock with no human pressure — just a herd where they could finally be real horses.
They needed that, and they loved it.
This is something vital we learn from horses (especially the wild ones): horses are about herd, not being slaves or toys for humans. Perhaps they want to be partners, but all the race horses who came to us, without exception, had been truly broken by humans. It was time for them to just be.
Their peace exuded so much calm that our sanctuary became known as “a place of peace.”
The cows, sheep, goats, and geese we’ve rescued have all contributed to our peaceful atmosphere by shedding the fear they once embodied and healing whatever ails they had.
Many people tend to think farm animals don’t feel, have souls, or mind being killed for humans. But they do. Very much. They fear and love and grieve just like any other mammal.. Many who came here, were broken by grief, often from losing their children. And their fear of humans was as tangible as the peace we’ve created in sanctuary. We give them all special Bush and Bach flower and homeopathic remedies to help them release the trauma and feel comforted and safe.
And you can see the tension leaving these beautiful souls when they enter our gates. They feel the peace, and know the truck is never coming for them. They are safe. We will never forget when one of our steers got stuck next door, and they had hired a truck to take their cows to market, so rounded him up with them, to drop him off here on the truck driver’s way home. We had all his cow mates in the yards waiting for him. But Freddy leapt out of the truck, shaking and terrified, and ran off into the bush, so scared he couldn’t see straight. It took him a moment to realise he was back home, and that the cows were a welcoming committee. That night was something we will never forget because he was just so so so terrified. And of course he needed extra special care to regain his emotional equilibrium.
If a large animal like a cow or a horse goes down in the paddock, we will always stay with them, no matter the weather, o protect and care for them for as long as it takes, and sometimes this is the most important rehabilitation work we do on a spiritual level. Because a farm animal brought in wild and untrusting of humans finds themselves healing deep wounds of human atrocity and centuries of abuse. Healing with tenderness forms close bonds of trust and love, and it’s beautiful to see their defensiveness fall away and true healing take place.
Like we said at the beginning.. rehabilitation at our sanctuary includes the healing of the physical, but also the emotional, mental and spiritual. Alll the animals are treated holistically with vet care as well as a number of different modalities.
We have also raised many lambs and goat kids and other orphans in our old cottage. Our first sheep was Sarah, the lamb who arrived in a box. Her mother had died and the farmer didn’t want to raise her. But they had a friend staying with them at the time who insisted Sarah be saved. So they packed her up in a box and brought her to us. She was one of the lucky ones.
One wild goat mother brought us her twins to care for as she was dying — a true miracle. She knew we humans would take the kids into care. She trusted us with them. And we did. We took them into our old cottage and hand -raised them with bottles of goats milk and slippery elm powder. Bran and Ollie are still with us over a decade later! We also combed the bush for their sick mum, to see if we could help her recover and not wanting her to be out in the wild at the risk of being torn apart by predators. We found her in the bush down by the creek, and we brought her to safety in a cosy shed, where she could be at peace to recover or pass without fear.. Every life is precious and worth going the extra mile for.
At one point, we had a herd of 26 goats. As of 2024, we have eight very elderly goats who require extra care, but they remain a vital part of our sanctuary family. They get their feet trimmed and special food and remedies and emergency vet care for the ones who need help. Like Valentine the goat with the broken jaw who came into care. And went to the vet for help on Valentine’s Day.
What we’ve learned from caring for “farm” animals is that they are individuals, with personalities and intrinsic value. They’re more than just fungible commodities. They are sparks of life with souls who can be treasured for who they are. And every life saved and transformed by peace, helps the planet be a little more brighter with enlightenment.
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“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
– Mahatma Gandhi -
“In their innocence and wisdom, animals are the silent teachers of our humanity. A society that protects and reveres them is truly enlightened.”
– Unknown