Meet the Bluegum Family
Lee Trew
Lee taught bushcraft and 'coyote mentoring' on youth camps, before training as a psychotherapist and counsellor.
Lee has been using Jon Young's coyote mentoring approach for over a decade, and began learning and teaching bushcraft as a teenager at the Forest School Camps in the UK. He studied primitive survival skills at Tom Brown Jr's Tracker School, and Practical Primitive, both in the US, and spent a year living in the bush, finding shelter, water and food on the landscape; putting it into practice. More than that, he found a radically new experience of what it means to be human.
Now he brings psychology and bushcraft together for rewilding; helping people of all ages to reawaken their wildness and deepen their connection with the natural world.
He has also:
- completed Discovery Channel's Naked and Afraid 21-day challenge
- appeared on Channel Ten's The Project, speaking on screen-time and children
- featured in ABC's Life at 9 documentary
- a spoken on rewilding at the Ultimate Health Event in Sydney
- mentored Claire Dunn during the period she wrote about in her book,
My Year Without Matches
- acted as consultant on bushcraft and trapping for Australian film, The Hunter
Willem Dafoe, who played the title role, said:
"Lee is at home in the wild. His grace and skill in survival, trapping and bushcraft is remarkable.
His love and respect for nature and his level of comfort in a wild environment is inspiring.
He's also a gifted teacher. I'd want him in my tribe."
Lee has been using Jon Young's coyote mentoring approach for over a decade, and began learning and teaching bushcraft as a teenager at the Forest School Camps in the UK. He studied primitive survival skills at Tom Brown Jr's Tracker School, and Practical Primitive, both in the US, and spent a year living in the bush, finding shelter, water and food on the landscape; putting it into practice. More than that, he found a radically new experience of what it means to be human.
Now he brings psychology and bushcraft together for rewilding; helping people of all ages to reawaken their wildness and deepen their connection with the natural world.
He has also:
- completed Discovery Channel's Naked and Afraid 21-day challenge
- appeared on Channel Ten's The Project, speaking on screen-time and children
- featured in ABC's Life at 9 documentary
- a spoken on rewilding at the Ultimate Health Event in Sydney
- mentored Claire Dunn during the period she wrote about in her book,
My Year Without Matches
- acted as consultant on bushcraft and trapping for Australian film, The Hunter
Willem Dafoe, who played the title role, said:
"Lee is at home in the wild. His grace and skill in survival, trapping and bushcraft is remarkable.
His love and respect for nature and his level of comfort in a wild environment is inspiring.
He's also a gifted teacher. I'd want him in my tribe."
Gina Chick
Gina met Lee while he was living in a tipi in the bush. He followed her home to Australia, so she kept him.
At school, she was known as the kid who talked to birds - her bedroom was a sick bay for injured birds, with a branch at the foot of her bed for them to perch on.
In her 30's she spent a large chunk of time on Haggerstone Island in far north QLD, where she freedived deep enough to feel like a dolphin, hunting coral trout and crayfish with a speargun. Tracker School and Eddie Starnater's Practical Primitive gave her hands-on experience with indigenous living skills. When she gets time in the bush she enjoys shooting arrows or stalking wildlife with a camera.
Gina's passion is to bring adults and children home to their own internal authority... to facilitate connection to their deep truths, to each other, to the natural environment and the living planet. She runs women's circles and mixed groups in ReWilding and supports the kids programs at Bluegum.
At school, she was known as the kid who talked to birds - her bedroom was a sick bay for injured birds, with a branch at the foot of her bed for them to perch on.
In her 30's she spent a large chunk of time on Haggerstone Island in far north QLD, where she freedived deep enough to feel like a dolphin, hunting coral trout and crayfish with a speargun. Tracker School and Eddie Starnater's Practical Primitive gave her hands-on experience with indigenous living skills. When she gets time in the bush she enjoys shooting arrows or stalking wildlife with a camera.
Gina's passion is to bring adults and children home to their own internal authority... to facilitate connection to their deep truths, to each other, to the natural environment and the living planet. She runs women's circles and mixed groups in ReWilding and supports the kids programs at Bluegum.
Amber Nomchong (Bam)
Amber Nomchong (affectionately referred to as Bam or Bam-Bam), is a transformational facilitator with a deep interest in the therapeutic and psycho-spiritual capacity of nature immersion, community and cultural repair, Breathwork, intentional healing gatherings, somatic psychotherapy and various embodiment practices.
Bam and her family have been part of our camps for many many years and now call it their wild home. She is very clear that the rewilding camps have formed such a foundational component to her family's lives that they simply live and breathe it now. It lights her up to see kids playing wilding in the bush, parents chatting openingly about life around the fire, mentors sharing themselves so effortlessly with kids from all walks of life as if they had known them forever.
Bam has been practicing therapeutic and transpersonal Breathwork for over seven years in addition to teaching and facilitating various embodied and somatic movement practices for over 20 more. She offers individual and group Breathwork journeys, various women and teen embodiment and empowerment retreats and workshops, holistic wellness coaching, somatic psychotherapy, as well as family based rewilding immersions and practices.
Bam is passionate about using deep nature based modalities to support people to connect with their inner nature, to come home to themselves, reclaim their sense of belonging and find space to live a vital, conscious and wholehearted life.
On camp, Bam is at the centre of hugs, catching stories and wonder in equal measure, and wraps her enormous heart around every single person. which means she has a very, very big heart. There's room in it for everyone. She is a fierce advocate for the importance of every voice in a village.
She's also a complete clown when it's time to not take life so seriously. Which is often.
CAMERON TURK (CAM)
Cameron used to be a public servant. He stumbled into the Bluegum Rewild camps many years ago and never left. Now he's a firefighter (much more fun and heroic) and an essential part of the glue that holds the village together. Also, he sticks to your shoe if you don't watch where you put your feet. You can usually find him lighting the morning fires pre-dawn, wrangling kids and mentors and generally helping hold things together. He's allergic to earnest but every now and then we see a tear in his eye. Shhh, don't tell anyone.
In his spare time he carves spoons, plays guitar, knows the words to every 80's song and rescues kittens from trees.
Cameron loves a good dad joke. As if there is such a thing. When he and Lee have a dad-joke match it's even bets who'll take the prize. He's lucky I didn't pick a picture of him at the field party wearing a pair of Amber's tights and a pink tutu.
We can't remember what it was like before he came. Probably much quieter.
In his spare time he carves spoons, plays guitar, knows the words to every 80's song and rescues kittens from trees.
Cameron loves a good dad joke. As if there is such a thing. When he and Lee have a dad-joke match it's even bets who'll take the prize. He's lucky I didn't pick a picture of him at the field party wearing a pair of Amber's tights and a pink tutu.
We can't remember what it was like before he came. Probably much quieter.
SU JAMESON/ GANGSTa
Su is our resident elder. Her nickname is Gangsta, which tells you a lot. She manages the food and cooking, an enormous feat when you think about cooking in camp ovens for 100 people, on open fires.
On party day Su can be spotted dancing around the fires, and she puts the kids to shame with her energy and humour. She has a heart the size of a planet.
She's a mentor to kids and adults alike, has a service ethic and calling unlike anything we've ever seen, and pours all her love into the food that nourishes the camp. There are teen mentors on camp whose first experience of the village was being mentored by Su. She's one of the pillars holding up the village, and we couldn't do it without her.
When not at camp or assisting at other programs Su lives and loves on a bush block with 3 forest boundaries. Su raised two wild young men nurturing their connection to the natural world and their humanity. Su has a deep relationship with the land, her garden and with her community.
Su works at a youth refuge and has always worked with people- community services management, food and tourist industries, retail, and holding women's circles and family empowerment workshops aimed at bringing us all closer to this planet and reawakening our deep sense of belonging.
This work makes her heart sing.
On party day Su can be spotted dancing around the fires, and she puts the kids to shame with her energy and humour. She has a heart the size of a planet.
She's a mentor to kids and adults alike, has a service ethic and calling unlike anything we've ever seen, and pours all her love into the food that nourishes the camp. There are teen mentors on camp whose first experience of the village was being mentored by Su. She's one of the pillars holding up the village, and we couldn't do it without her.
When not at camp or assisting at other programs Su lives and loves on a bush block with 3 forest boundaries. Su raised two wild young men nurturing their connection to the natural world and their humanity. Su has a deep relationship with the land, her garden and with her community.
Su works at a youth refuge and has always worked with people- community services management, food and tourist industries, retail, and holding women's circles and family empowerment workshops aimed at bringing us all closer to this planet and reawakening our deep sense of belonging.
This work makes her heart sing.