Able Stables

Able Stables I offer authenticity and evidence-based approaches to build skills and resilience. Utilising nature and holistic evidence-based therapeutic approaches.

Member of the Australian Counselling Association. I am committed to ongoing professional development.

Without bees, the garden doesn't exist.Not just this garden, with its violas and early-morning light, but all of it. The...
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

Every year, right on time, reliable as always. Mushrooms growing at the base of the birch trees.I do not know why that g...
30/04/2026

Every year, right on time, reliable as always. Mushrooms growing at the base of the birch trees.
I do not know why that gets me.
Maybe because so much feels unpredictable right now.

But these just... show up. Every season. Without fail.
Beneath the surface, fungi form vast underground networks, passing nutrients between trees, supporting the whole forest quietly and constantly. None of it visible. All of it essential.
There is something steadying about things in nature you can count on. The same trees. The same patch. The same reminder that some things hold, even when everything else feels like it is shifting.

On the hard days, I think that matters more than we realise.

What do you wait for each year in nature that feels reliable? The thing that shows up and lets you breathe again. I would genuinely love to know.

25/04/2026

Up early for study and feed out.
I love the birdcall in the mornings.
Enjoy.

For those who built their community on the raging terrors of war,Silent in their experiences, as screaming, through mind...
24/04/2026

For those who built their community on the raging terrors of war,
Silent in their experiences, as screaming, through minds tore,
Of nightmares, isolation, camaraderie and regret,
Today is our chance to honour them.
We will not forget.

AjB
2026

This is our gorgeous surfer boy Bo-Bo , on his last car ride. He didn't know that it was. He was just happy out and abou...
19/04/2026

This is our gorgeous surfer boy Bo-Bo , on his last car ride. He didn't know that it was. He was just happy out and about in the car. I like to think he assumed we were collecting the Vets for a trip to the beach.

Bo-Bo was a free spirit, gentle, kind, and wonderfully economical with his energy. The people who visited Able Stables will remember him as a quiet presence who somehow made everyone feel unconditionally loved as he settled himself on their feet. The reality, of course, was that it simply stopped them from walking. He had his own logic, and that was ok, it also included the fact that all carrots were his, not at all for the horses!

On Wednesday we said goodbye to him, surrounded by family, laughter, and his original blanket from the people who loved him before us. His curly coat was warm under our hands, and his ears heard every word we said to him.

He was not in pain. But his body had quietly begun to let him down, and we made the decision to help him go before that changed. It is, perhaps, the most loving and difficult thing you can do for another creature, to choose their comfort over your own need for more time.

Grief has a way of reminding you that the world keeps moving, emails arrive, the day carries on, and somehow that is both the hardest and the most comforting thing.

He was here, fully and joyfully, until he wasn't. The world will go on, and he will have been part of it.

Be kind to the people and animals in your life today. They notice.
Rest well, best boy. 🐾

⭐️ Thank you for all the incredible comments. He touched so many people and he will be missed.

Autumn is the season for letting go.There is something quietly instructive about a tree in late autumn. Those leaves, d...
12/04/2026

Autumn is the season for letting go.

There is something quietly instructive about a tree in late autumn. Those leaves, deep red, paper-thin, holding on in the face of what is clearly coming, are doing the only thing they know how to do. Showing up. Staying present.

Even when the sky has other plans. It does not brace against the storm by gripping tighter. It has already begun the slow work of release, long before the wind arrived to hurry things along. And yet here it stands, grounded, unhurried, neither pretending the storm is not coming nor collapsing in anticipation of it.

Resilience is often mistaken for toughness. How many times do we hear "oh, you're so strong," for weathering things without flinching? The reality is that we rarely have the luxury of choice to do otherwise.

Perhaps it can look more like this: knowing what you can hold, knowing what must be released, and trusting that the foundations will carry you through regardless. And if you are wavering, support is there if we feel we can ask.

Whatever storm is gathering on your horizon today, you do not have to be unmoved by it. You just have to stay grounded.

Yesterday it was Goo-Bear's chair. Today, given the temperature outside, I expect it will be again.There is something wo...
10/04/2026

Yesterday it was Goo-Bear's chair. Today, given the temperature outside, I expect it will be again.

There is something worth saying about that image. A warm room, a fire, a bookshelf, a dog who has made an executive decision about where he belongs. It looks, I think, like somewhere a person might feel safe enough to do something difficult.
That's not accidental.

Growth, real growth, the kind that lasts, doesn't happen in comfort alone. It happens when comfort and challenge exist in the same place at the same time. The fire and the work. The familiar and the confronting. The dog in the chair and the conversation that follows.

At Sandbeck, the environment itself asks something of the people who come here. The animals need attending to. The seasons set the rhythm. The community, my family, the people who provide services, the other clients, has its own life, its own pace, its own quiet requirements. People arrive and, gently and in their own time, find where they belong within it, supported at every step.

What happens next is something to witness. The research describes it well: positive emotional experiences in natural environments promote changes in thinking and cognitive systems, which then bring about changes in behaviour and restoration of interpersonal relationships and social life.

In plain terms, what people discover here about themselves does not stay here. Confidence transfers. Steadiness holds in other rooms, other relationships, other challenges. Studies show statistically significant increases in interpersonal relationship skills including openness, communication, sensitivity and credibility among people who participate in nature-based therapeutic programs, and those outcomes are largely maintained well after treatment ends.

The clients who find their way here and do the work, and it is work, are quietly extraordinary. They show up. They engage with something real. They allow themselves to be changed by it. And they carry that change outward into their lives in ways that are sometimes difficult to put into words, and sometimes very easy.
This is also why places like this are rare, and why they require careful stewardship. The animals, the land, the community, and the work all have integrity of their own. That integrity is not incidental to the therapy. It is the therapy.

For those who are ready to be part of something like this, there is very little else quite like it. And to the clinicians, planners and professionals who have made the drive out, walked the property, and taken the time to understand what happens here, thank you. Good science has always begun with the willingness to look at something properly. Sandbeck is glad to be looked at.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there are weekend sessions to get to. Curious to see what this one brings.
Read more, including the full research references, on the Able Stables blog: https://www.ablestables.com.au/blog/the-chair-the-fire-and-the-work-that-happens-here

Able Stables. Nature-based counselling, Pipers River, Northern Tasmania.
www.ablestables.com.au

Not growing puppies. Growing potatoes and other important things.These two have claimed the freshly prepared veggie bed ...
09/04/2026

Not growing puppies.
Growing potatoes and other important things.

These two have claimed the freshly prepared veggie bed as their own. Honestly, fair enough, it's the warmest, most comfortable spot on the property right now. They've also, completely by accident, illustrated something I think about a lot.

A garden doesn't grow itself. You prepare the ground. You plant with intention. You show up even when nothing seems to be happening. And then, slowly, quietly, things change.

Research backs this up too: gardening is increasingly recognised as a genuinely therapeutic activity, not just a pleasant hobby. It builds patience, problem-solving, confidence and a sense of purpose.

It teaches us that growth is rarely dramatic. Mostly it's incremental, and mostly it requires us to get out of the way and trust the process we've already set in motion.

That's not so different from what we do in counselling. The work isn't always obvious from the outside. Sometimes you're just lying in a garden bed, looking like nothing's happening.
But underneath, things are growing.
🐾 Gorgeous Boy and Bo-Bo, resident consultants, Able Stables.

There's something about a sky like this that stops you mid-thought.No agenda. No prompts. Just colour doing what colour ...
07/04/2026

There's something about a sky like this that stops you mid-thought.

No agenda. No prompts.
Just colour doing what colour does.

We talk a lot about reflection as though it's something we have to schedule. A practice. A technique. A thing we're meant to be better at.

But sometimes it just happens. You look up, and something in you goes quiet, and for a moment you're not problem-solving or planning or replaying the afternoon. You're just here.

That's not nothing. That's actually quite a lot.

Sandbeck serves up skies like this regularly, and I am never not grateful for it.

What was the last thing that stopped you in your tracks?

Sometimes the tools you offer others are the ones you quietly pick up yourself.There are days when things unfold differe...
02/04/2026

Sometimes the tools you offer others are the ones you quietly pick up yourself.
There are days when things unfold differently to how you expected. Not badly. Not anyone's fault. Just differently. And your nervous system, your schedule, your carefully held sense of order gets asked to flex in ways you didn't anticipate.

This was one of those days.
What you see in this photo is not distress. It's not defeat. It's what it actually looks like to sit with something. To let the initial noise settle before deciding how to meet what's in front of you. To resist the urge to immediately fix, manage, or perform being fine.

This is what forty five years of lived experience looks like in practice. Not polished. Not posed. Just present.

Whatever today holds for you, and this long weekend can carry unexpected weight for many people, you are allowed to sit down somewhere quiet and just be in it for a moment before you decide what comes next.

That's not a luxury. That's the work. 🌿

I've written a little more about this over on the blog you can find it here: http://www.ablestables.com.au/blog/what-the-tools-actually-look-like

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"Sandbeck"
Pipers River, TAS
7252

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