Able Stables

Nature-based counselling in Pipers River, Northern Tasmania, helping individuals and families build skills and resilience through grief, change and anxiety.

Evidence-led, trauma-informed, and grounded in experience. Counselling Beyond the Clinic.

04/09/2026

It's the weekend!
Are we excited??
Show me 🎉

23/08/2026

To ensure both dogs get brushed well, when I am on my own, I seperate them.

Gussy loves being brushed. ❤️
Finnigan takes a while to remember that he loves to be brushed. 🤣

Little Bro reached out to offer comfort, its the smallest actions that can mean so much. 🥹

08/08/2026

When the words in your mind are "the vagus nerve" but the words out of your mouth are "the nervous vague " you realise self-care is a priority!

Fortunately it provided a client with a great laugh.

Weekend away is just the ticket.

15/07/2026

Beautiful Day.
Enjoying the sun, coffee, paperwork & taking a moment before the first client of the day.

03/07/2026

Hmmm, it's all in the details I guess.

Technically the dogs arent 'running' through the dry creek bed in the new zen garden we are building. Communication skills count.

I love the amazing image from a client where Finnigan is posing beautifully. Then the look he is giving me.....

Have to love his sense of humour.

30/06/2026

A few days ago I watched a wedge-tailed eagle circling over the paddock. High up. On its own. Going round and round and round.
That is the image I keep coming back to, because that is what loneliness actually looks like. It is not always being by yourself. Sometimes it is being up there in full view of everyone and still completely alone with what you are carrying, going round the same thing over and over, while the world underneath carries on with no idea you are up there at all.

Many of our youth keep it together at school, coping and managing, so everything looks fine from the outside. Then the bell goes and they fall apart in the car, or with siblings or parents or within themselves, where only you can see it. They are not struggling any less. They are just circling where no one is looking.
And if you are their parent, you know that circle too.

You can see what it costs your child and where it goes if nothing changes. So you knock on doors. A lot of the time those doors tell you there is nothing wrong yet, come back when it is worse. Not because the people behind them do not care. Most of them do. It is that help tends to arrive after things fall apart, not before, and your child is not in crisis yet. They are still going round.

I understand how lonely it is to be the only one who can see it.
So here is what I want you to know. That circling does not have to continue until it turns into the crisis the system is finally ready to act on. When a child gets the right support while they are still managing, while there is still room to move, they can build skills that change the whole direction of things. The heavier help that comes later can often be made smaller, or never needed at all.
That is not wishful thinking. It is the reason this whole property exists. There was nothing out there that offered this kind of support in this kind of place, so I built one. It has taken more than twenty years to make it what it is.

You do not have to write any of this in the comments or explain yourself to anyone here. I just wanted the parent who already sees the circling and is looking for another way before it escalates to know there is one. It is here. It took twenty years to build and is available to others, while it still feels early.
You don't have to keep circling.

16/06/2026

It's been a while. Life got full, between work and uni, and this little corner went quiet. I've missed it.
But I've still been out at 5am checking on the property and enjoying the silence. That part doesn't change.
There's something about that time of morning that I can't quite explain to anyone who hasn't stood in it. The sky is enormous. The quiet wraps around you. The darkness out here isn't something to push through, it's something to be in. I find it humbling every single time.
I took these photos a few winters back on a June morning at Sandbeck. Same sky, two seconds apart. The difference is the camera flash caught the leaves on the branches that my eyes couldn't quite pick up in the dark.
The detail was always there. I just couldn't see it initially.
That's something I come back to a lot in my work. So much of what tangles us up, the misunderstandings, the assumptions, the feeling of being stuck, comes from not having the full picture. When we can slow down and look more clearly at what's actually in front of us, what's fact and what's feeling, we start to get our choices back. We can't always change what's there. But we can change how we respond to it.
Perspective is a funny thing. Decades of living have taught me that what we see depends on where we stand and sometimes on who's with us.
It's good to be back.
Amanda

Able Stables | Nature-Based Counselling | Sandbeck, Tasmania

30/05/2026

Printer running low.
Thirteen weeks to get here. That is how long it took to run these cartridges down.
There is a Uni exam coming up and I have been putting in the hours. I will not tell you what time the alarm goes off because that is not the point, and honestly it is not a competition. The point is that I found the time that works for me, and I used it. That looks different for everyone.
Sometimes you need the evidence in front of you. The mind has a way of talking you out of what you have actually done, convincing you it was not enough, not consistent enough, not serious enough. And then you look at the printer and it is almost out of toner. Thirteen weeks of notes, readings, drafts and revisions. That is the reality. That is what the work actually looks like when you add it up.
Whatever your version of the long hours looks like, it counts. All of it. The work you fit around everything else, the session that only lasted twenty minutes, the notes you listen to in the car, harrowing the paddocks or feeding out. It adds up in ways that are quiet and slow and easy to dismiss until you stop and look at the actual evidence.
The printer does not lie.
Ready for the exam. Ready for a small break after.

10/05/2026

Without bees, the garden doesn't exist.
Not just this garden, with its violas and early-morning light, but all of it. The food on our tables. The wildflowers on the roadside. The whole, quiet business of things growing.
Bees don't wait for recognition. They just show up, do the work, and move on to the next flower. They give more than most of us ever stop to notice, and the garden is only possible because of them.
On Mother's Day, I find myself thinking about everyone who works like that.
The ones who showed up, day after day, with no instruction manual and no certainty it would be enough. Who packed the lunches and sat in the dark when someone needed them to and gave from a place that sometimes ran very low, and found a way to give anyway. Who tended something fragile and watched it grow.
Not only the mothers who carried that name. The grandmothers who stepped back in when life asked it of them. The aunties, the family friends, the carers, the people who were never called "mum" but did the steady, essential work of it regardless.
I also want to say something to those for whom today sits differently.
If you're missing someone today, that grief is real and it belongs here too. If you longed to be a mother and aren't, or if that hope is still tender, today can bring feelings that are hard to name. You don't have to put a brave face on any of it. Whatever today is for you, that's allowed.
The bee doesn't need a ceremony to matter. Its work is woven into everything around it, whether anyone is watching or not.
That's true of so many of the people we're thinking of today.
Happy Mother's Day to everyone who tends something, in all the forms that takes.

Able Stables | Sandbeck, Tasmania
Modern Science. Timeless Wisdom.

03/05/2026

The first winter rains have hit Sandbeck, and the creek on our property is running.
There is something about this time of year that I find quietly extraordinary. The forest shifts. You can feel it breathing with relief. Moss appears overnight on the old logs. The birds fill the canopy again. The water that was a trickle becomes something urgent and alive.
Clients often tell me that the creek is the thing they think about between sessions. Not what was said in the session, but the sound of the water, the smell of the bush after rain, the feeling of sitting still in a place that is also moving.
This is what makes Able Stables different. We don't do therapy in a clinic. We do it in a living, breathing Tasmanian bush setting, with nature walks, creek-side seating, the horses nearby, and all the birdlife that comes with a healthy bush block.
The winter rains bring change that can feel hard, things come loose, the ground shifts. But it is also when everything regenerates. There is a metaphor in there that I don't need to push too hard. The forest already knows it.
If you have been thinking about counselling, or wondering what nature-based therapy actually looks and feels like, come and see us. Walk beside the creek. Let the bush do some of the work.
Able Stables | Nature-Based Therapy | Sandbeck, Tasmania | Enquiries welcome.

www.ablestables.com.au/blog/ank22zq0w2v8n0szzhf8lkw2l4mpm2

Address

"Sandbeck"
Pipers River, TAS
7252

Website

http://www.ablestables.com.au/

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