Media

We are pleased to assist media representatives with details relating to our tours and the Australian experience generally. Care to contact us when convenient.

Appearing in The Australian FINANCIAL REVIEW MAGAZINE

"A Road Less Travelled" - Extract from story by Deidre Macken

Unlike eco-tourism, there is no worldwide template for "legacy tourism". However, World Legacy Awards defines sustainable tourism as something that benefits the locals and encourages a culture exchange. Most operators agree with that definition.

Nor is it confined to the third world. The journey can be literally and figuratively, internal. Former event organiser John Thompson has brought the movement home through his Nature Bound Australia group.As his brochure promises: "the real adventure lies in the intellectual, cultural and spiritual fulfilments awaiting you in richly diverse landscapes and habitats. We choose to visit, not invade, while practising a responsible and sustainable travel ethic."

Based in Brisbane, Thompson's tours explore outback Australia, largely with visitors from UK, US and Europe. That he says," is partly a reflection of the cost and partly because Australian's have a view that these places are just up the road.

We call ourselves eco-tours but we're also conscious of supporting local businesses - so it's more than eco-tourism. We have to sustain those people who are trying to survive in remote areas, so we stay in small hotels; get locals to take us birding for fees; go out to dinner with them and go to their small wineries".

Indeed while tourists to Australia are in search of cute animals and more, Thompson has expended the experience to include "real" Australian characters in their habitats."Australia is a wonderful place to run into these sorts of characters. We have fostered a fellow who runs a basic motel in outback Queensland but he's also a stargazer and has his own observatory out the back of the motel. We get academics to give talks on their specialties or to explain the evolution of our plants and wildlife. There's another fellow, Ned Winter, who's a poet and tells yarns about his droving days and also has over 70 camp cooking ovens. We call on him at his own property, where he breeds roos and wallabies. None of it is orchestrated. They're just people we've met and that's what most travellers remember about the trip - the people they meet".

Whether its weaving place-mats with Vietnamees hill tribes, building footbridges in Peru or stargazing with an outback motelier, these travel experiences often go beyond a cultural exchange. The socially conscious trip often ends up raising the traveller's consciousness, straying beyond borders and into highly emotional territory. Says Thompson: "One businessman and his wife who came on a tour took us to dinner and said we should offer trips to people who are at midlife so they can get out into the wilderness and sit on a rock and figure things out. People come for that anyway. We don't do therapy, its a case of taking people into a pristine environment and letting the environment do it. In some way, that's socially responsible travel too, because a lot of people are (privately) screwed up in life.

It has crossed my mind that we should talk to a psychologist so we can better manage this. A fellow turned to me after three or four days and he said, "This is the first time that the only thing I've had to think about is where to put my feet"

Appearing "LIFE & LEISURE / THE SOPHISTICATED TRAVELLER"

The Australian FINANCIAL REVIEW - Story by Paul Edwards

"I always thought the walking holiday was something to be done just once, and even then only for the good of the soul.

Things have changed, and the deal now is for holidays that ease the conscience, burn the calories and give a feeling however small, of oneness with the early settlers.You can stride out on a misty mountain or a burning desert, knowing that before long someone is going to give you remarkably fine food and the appropriate wine, and that you'll sleep in a well-equipped tent that someone else has carried and set up.Better yet - on many tours you'll sleep in a luxury resort.

Paradoxically, of all the holiday genres, walking is the one where you might think you don't need any professional help..... that's one way of doing the walking thing.

Then there's the enjoyable way - the organised holiday where somebody blazes the trail, carries your bags and makes sure the wine has breathed long enough to complement the free-range chicken in tandoori marinade, cooked on the open fire. At the end of the day all you have to do is eat drink and sit around the camp fire telling lies.

Nature-Bound Australia has tours ranging up to 25 days and in nine scenic regions, with vehicle support. The regions include the Great Divide, the Queensland tropics, a full circle of Tasmania, Alice to the Rock, Kakadu, the Kimberley, a wildflower tour of the Margaret River district, the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Queensland-New South Wales border region.

"People want to do more than just walk" operator John Thompson says. "each tour is balanced with other regional features, including historic villages, bush legends, Aboriginal rock art and culture, National Trust properties, boutique wineries and artist galleries. The emphasis is on authentic Australian experiences mainly in remote areas and along back tracks"

Appearing "TRAVELS IN ANTHROPOLOGY" CNN MONEY (USA)

Nature-Bound Australia conducts tours through northern Australia that include a visit to Quinkan Country in far north Queensland, which, according to managing director John Thompson," is home to 1000 or more extraordinary rock art galleries graphically depicting the history and unique literature of an ancient peoples, informing us today of their spirit, religion and mythology"

Tour guests may immerse themselves in the eternal resting place of the Quinkan spirits, the inspiring dreamtime, messages of creation, sorcery, love, magic, hunting, fertlity and hardship. The galleries reflect an unbroken line of ancestry stretching back 2000 generations.