This is a two-day, one-night retreat for a team of roughly fifteen to twenty, based in Dixons Creek. The shape matters more than the exact times: one working session per day, one activity, and room to breathe.
Day one
10:00 to 11:30, Travel
Leave the city mid morning rather than at dawn. It avoids the commute, and people arrive able to think. Allow about 90 minutes from Melbourne to Dixons Creek. Encourage carpooling, which does more for team conversation than most structured activities.
11:30, Arrive and drop bags
Standard check-in is from 2pm. Early check-in may be arranged for selected rooms, subject to availability, so flag it when you book if you need rooms available on arrival. Otherwise bags go in one place and the day starts without them.
12:00 to 13:15, Lunch
Eat before you work. A relaxed lunch at a nearby winery restaurant sets the tone better than sandwiches in a meeting room. Fergusson Winery is about a five minute walk from the property.
13:30 to 16:30, The working session
This is the one substantial piece of work in the whole retreat, so protect it. Three hours with a break in the middle is the realistic limit for useful group thinking. Anything you have not covered by 16:30 goes on tomorrow's list rather than into an extra hour.
Meeting space is arranged through our partner venues. Capacity, equipment and pricing are subject to confirmation with them, so book it at the same time as the rooms.
16:30 to 18:00, Nothing
Deliberately. People walk, sit by the lake, take a call they have been avoiding, or go back to their room. This gap is not wasted time, it is what makes the dinner conversation work.
18:30, Dinner
Somewhere close enough to walk back from. Then the fire pit, which does more for a team than any facilitated exercise ever has.
Day two
Optional 06:00, Sunrise balloon flight
If the budget allows and the group is willing, a sunrise hot air balloon flight over the valley is the thing people remember years later. Global Ballooning run private group flights. It has to be early because the air is only calm just after dawn.
08:00 to 09:30, Breakfast and check-out
Check-out is 10am. Bags in cars before the morning session so nobody is watching the clock later.
09:30 to 11:30, Session two
Shorter and more concrete than day one. This is where yesterday's discussion becomes a list with names against it. Two hours is enough. If it is not, the problem is the agenda.
11:30 to 14:00, The activity
One activity, chosen to suit the group rather than the organiser. Yarra Valley X arrange e-bike tours and team-building days locally. A guided wine tour works for groups that would rather talk than compete. Walking the Black Spur works for groups that would rather be outside.
14:00, Lunch, then home
Finish with food rather than a debrief. People remember the last hour, and it should not be a meeting. Back in the city by mid afternoon.
What this costs you in time
Roughly a day and a half of working time for two days of calendar time, with three hours of travel. That is a favourable ratio for somewhere an hour out of the city, and it is the main argument for the Yarra Valley over a destination that needs flights.
To price a version of this for your team, use the form on our Corporate Retreats page.
Stay in the middle of the valley
De'Vine Escape has 22 rooms on ten acres in Dixons Creek, about a five minute walk from Fergusson Winery and an hour from Melbourne.