|
Echidna Walkabout - About Us and the Environment!
Since 1993 Echidna Walkabout has been providing high quality nature experiences throughout Victoria and south east Australia for small groups of international and domestic travellers.We organise everything for you on our fully guided and catered journeys. Our prices include everything except for your personal effects (which you probably wouldn't want us to deal with anyway!). Please read our detailed tour itineraries and if you have any doubts about what is included please ask us.
Janine Duffy and Roger Smith are the founders and Owner/Operators of Echidna Walkabout, based in Melbourne, Victoria. They both have a strong respect for the environment, the indigenous cultures and interest in environmentally sustainable living.
Our in-house guide training program ensures that your guide is qualified in all aspects of tour leadership, first aid, logistics and organisation with special emphasis on interpretation of nature and Aboriginal Culture.
Environment
Echidna Walkabout’s driving principle, from inception, is positive conservation. We believe that people protect what they know, and what they love. So we set out to create a style of tourism that not only minimizes negative effects on the environment, but positively creates a sense of wonder, an understanding, a power to change for the better. Interestingly, in the process, tourism changed us! Our international clients taught us not to take any of our natural assets for granted. Our magnificent wild kangaroos, our gentle koalas, our noisy gorgeous cockatoos – even our huge stinging Bull Ants – are all so special and we are so lucky to have them in Australia! Knowing these wild animals, working with them every day and teaching others how to work with them has given us a new appreciation and a greater passion to preserve our wildlife and natural spaces.
In addition, we were lucky enough to start working with our local Aboriginal Community – the Wathaurong – who have continued to be mentors, teachers and friends. Much of our understanding of wildlife, the bush and of Respect has come from their teaching, and we have a lot to thank them for. The Gunai/Kurnai People of East Gippsland have also taught us much about their magnificent area. We always aim to work with the indigenous people of any area we travel to. Not only is it the correct protocol, it is usually enormously rewarding. Australians are incredibly lucky that our first people are here and are willing to talk and share with us.
The greatest compliment we receive is when our travellers return to their home and see their own place, their own wildlife, and maybe their indigenous culture with a new enthusiasm.
Many of our environmental practices are hidden behind the scenes of a tour. As eco-tour operators we respect, reduce, re-use and recycle, as a matter of course. But it is in the details that these ethics are shown. Following is a list of our environmental practices, which are important to all facets of the business, and personally.
But we believe that tour operators should do more than just minimize their impact. Nature tour operators, in particular, have a fantastic opportunity to do research. We visit the same locations over and over again, sometimes every day, all year. Often tour guides are seeing the same animals – sometimes the same individual animals – many, many times. All we need to do is make notes and take photographs of what we see, and over time the data collected becomes an enormous and valuable resource. All free, and all fully funded by the normal day-to-day operations of a tourism business.
This is how we started our Koala Research Project. Simply by looking, and making notes, we started to see more and more. Over time we came to identify individual koalas. From there we could map their home ranges. After several years we had a massive store of information, all waiting to be analysed. Little did we know how important that would become. When a bushfire devastated our Koala Research area, but spared a few of our named koalas, we could look back and show their pre-fire home range, and compare that to their post-fire home range.
There is so much natural history research that still needs to be done in Australia – too much for the scientific community, and far too much for the funding available. Amateur research can be valuable, and can assist the scientific community – it can provide the background, the anecdotal evidence, and sometimes the starting point for a very important scientific study. Even on it’s own, amateur research can be a valuable management tool, especially when there’s nothing else! I have lost count of the number of times I have read pers comm. (personal communication) in scientific reports, and of the number of examples of plants discovered by interested amateur bushwalkers. Our simple advice to tour guides: take a notebook! You never know where it may lead!
Environmental and sustainable tourism practices – the details:
At Echidna Walkabout we –
- lead by example. Our guides are trained to impart an environmental ethic that respects the animals and ecosystems that we encounter. We speak quietly around wildlife, walk slowly towards them, stopping often. We maintain a 10 metre distance from most wildlife, especially koalas and kangaroos which are easily distressed. We do not tolerate behaviour from our guests that will stress/harm the wildlife and find that by explaining the importance of following our clear instructions and by leading by example our guests are pleased to comply.
-
train our guides intensively and we encourage further learning on all aspects of the environment. We believe that the more you know about an animal or plant, the more you are inclined to protect it, and enthuse others about it. Natural history books are available to all guides on loan from our collection. We compile a Nature Guide News every month with an in-depth profile of one plant and one animal that we frequently encounter.
- monitor the koalas that we see, and analyse and compile reports for the National Parks Service. We identify koalas by observing them from the ground through binoculars. Using this method we don’t need to tag the koalas, which is highly intrusive and stressful for them, but we still collect valuable and accurate data.
- minimise vehicle travel and fuel by employing local people and using local suppliers and businesses as much as possible.
- minimize off-road vehicle travel. Our tours are designed in such a way that vehicle travel is conducted on made roads. We do not use four-wheel drive vehicles for passenger transport, instead we have one four-wheel drive vehicle for support, that is available to assist in emergencies.
- take all rubbish with us when we go, often including anything we find left behind by others.
- check the fireplaces left by others in the National Parks we visit, and put out any campfires left in a dangerous condition.
- inform other park users of the laws and codes of the National Parks. For instance we often stop and ask dog owners to put their dog on a leash while in the You Yangs Regional Park, which helps protect the wildlife.
- create awareness and understanding of the local Aboriginal Culture by working with and learning from the local indigenous people, employing indigenous people where possible, including them in tours where possible and passing on respect for their culture to our guests.
- are members of a wildlife protection organisation, and are active in promoting the care and rehabilitation of injured native wildlife.
- train all our staff to look out for injured native wildlife, and we carry a first aid kit for wildlife in all vehicles. We stop and check road-killed animals, and often move them off the road to prevent native predators from being killed by cars whilst feeding on roadkill.
- drive slowly in National Parks and wildlife areas to avoid killing wildlife on the road
- are planting native trees and shrubs and rehabilitating wetlands on our own bush property in the Brisbane Ranges. Our vision for this property is to create a wildlife refuge adjoining the National Park, with wetlands, grasslands, closed and open forest areas to encourage the greatest diversity of wildlife.
- buy locally produced fruit from markets and independent businesses, where possible. We avoid disposable plastic bags for carrying or storage of fruit. Instead we pack our fruit into re-usable, washable canvas bags for carrying, and store fruit in stay-fresh green bags designed to keep food fresh.
- avoid disposable products. Our cutlery, crockery and food containers are enamel, metal and hard plastic and are washed and re-used.
- carry food in hard plastic containers which are washed and re-used, or in paper bags which are composted or recycled.
- discourage the use of throw-away plastic water bottles by recommending that travellers bring their own bottle which we re-fill on request with tap water from a large storage container. We do not provide disposable water bottles to our guests – if travellers don’t have their own bottle we offer a plastic cup which we wash and re-use.
- pack dirty dishes in washable fabric bags while on tour, rather than in plastic
- wash crockery, cutlery and food containers using biodegradable detergents. We wash by hand - we do not use a dishwasher as they use too much water.
- compost food scraps where possible. The compost is used on our bush property/wildlife refuge in the Brisbane Ranges to assist the growth of native plants.
- wash linen/tablecloths and all our own clothing in phosphate-free, biodegradable washing detergent. All the “grey” water from the washing machine goes onto our native garden.
- use recycled paper/kitchen towel instead of napkins. After use the towel is composted.
- clean our vehicles with one small bucket of recycled water and an “Enjo”-style re-usable cloth that uses no chemicals and very little water to clean. After use the water is put on our native garden.
|
Janine's enthusiasm and attention to detail are highly regarded by our guests. In what little spare time she finds, she is researching the Koalas of the Brisbane Ranges and You Yangs. She is a wildlife artist and has a degree in Planning and Design.
An experienced naturalist and bushman, Roger is a friendly, outgoing character who enjoys getting to know his clients well. He has a comprehensive understanding of the Australian environment.
His previous experience included working as a builder and for the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Belinda has been an enthusiastic and dedicated Guide since 2000. She has a Bachelor of Applied Science majoring in Environmental Management and Tourism and has studied small native mammals in East Gippsland and the Otways and the plants and reptiles of south-western New South Wales. She has a great love for Emus! Her terrific sense of humour, and the Emu's quirky nature seem to blend together into a fun partnership.
|
