About Araucaria Ecotours

Araucaria Ecotours
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Araucaria Ecoturs run quality wildlife tours and other ecotours (four tourism awards) , and also conduct fauna surveys and other consultancies

What does our name mean?        Who are we?          History of tours          Ecotourism ideals

What does our name (Araucaria Ecotours) mean?       

Araucaria
Araucaria trees
An ancient supercontinent existed for hundreds of millions of years. Araucaria and its relatives were the main confiers (Pinus species are the main conifers of the northern hemisphere). The South American monkey puzzle tree is also an Araucaria, connected through ancestry from when Australia, Antarctica and South America were a continuous landmass. Native hoop pines (Araucaria cunninghamii)  grow on our property and in local forests. Australia's other remaing species of Araucaria, the bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) is native to Queensland north of Brisbane, and we offer a tour to these primitive forests. Araucaria is nowadays confined to Australia and neighbouring islands (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Norfolk Island) and the southern half of South America (Chile, Argentina, southern Brazil), with the related Agathis also in New Zealand and the related Wollemi pine in the Blue Mountains near Sydney.


Ecotours
‘Ecotours’ refers to tours that uphold the ideals of ecotourism: visiting native habitats, environmentally sound, educational and contributing to the local community. We hold advanced eco-accreditation for each tour so far applied for. Please see our page on ecotourism principles


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Who are we?

Araucaria Ecotours is a  family company run by Ronda, Denis and Darren Green since 1997.

the Green family
Ronda is a zoologist with many years of experience both in ecological research and nature interpretation.
Denis, her husband, has been a science and maths teacher as well as an industrial chemist, now working on the tours and writing interpretive computer programs
Darren, their son, has spent his life amongst the forests and wildlife of southeast Queensland, and is a keen nature photographer as well as a talented musician.

Ronda and Darren are your main guides for the tours
To find out more about us, please visit:
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History of Araucaria Ecotours         
front gateMost real estate agents told us we were crazy when we looked for a property within our budget which was less than two hours’ drive from Brisbane, with rainforest and a permanent creek, adjacent to a National Park or similar protected area and at least 50 acres.

After some intensive searching however, we found it: 87 acres at the foot of Mt Chinghee near the Queensland-NSW border, about a third covered in fairly mature rainforest regrowth, adjacent to Mt Chinghee NP (covered in seasonally-dry rainforest) and with views to Border Ranges NP and Lamington NP, one kilometre of Running Creek (which has never stopped running in even the worst of droughts), and just a 90 minute drive to either Brisbane or the Gold Coast. Steep slopes that were covered largely in weeds and land-slips are now on their way back to being rainforest.

Wallaby Waycanoe, Running CreekMuch of the rest of the property is grassy (mostly the native kangaroo grass Themeda australis with scattered forest red gum (also called Queensland blue gum) Eucalyptus tereticornis. The riparian section along the river is dominated by sheoaks and melaleucas, with many bottlebrush and a few rainforest species such as figs and lillypillies. The massive flood of January 2008 took out more than 90% of these trees, but there are now many young ones coming up.

Wildlife on the property includes platypus, koala, red-necked wallaby, brushtail possum, squirrel glider, northern brown bandicoot, brushtailed phascogale, yellow-footed antechinus, common dunnart, water-rat and other native rats, fruitbats, microbats, regent bowerbird, lewin’s honeyeater, eastern whipbird, sulphur-crested cockatoo, azure kingfisher, black-breasted button-quail, tawny frogmouth, little pied cormorant and many other birds, lace monitor (goannas), bearded dragon, eastern water dragon, eastern water skink, major skink, carpet python, short-necked turtle and other reptiles, green tree frog, stony creek frogs, broad-palmed rocket frogs, ornate burrowing frogs and other frogs, eels, catfish and other fish plus many butterflies and other invertebrates. These creatures are all truly wild, so we cannot guarantee seeing any particular species, but there is always something to see.

We began running ectours in May 1997, with just one product, the 3-day wildlife tour, in a 5-seater vehicle, advertised by photocopied fliers to backpacker hostels.  Soon after, we purchased an 8-seater minibus, started our first website, and acheived eco-accreditation for our tour.  Travellers who could not stay in Queensland long enough for our 3-day tour started asking about day-tour possibilities, so we added three of these (bird-watching, bush-walking and Coochiemudlo Island) and soon had advanced eco-accreditation for all four tours. We acheived our first tourism award in 2002 and have won other awards since then.

When a beautiful new Bed-and-Breakfast, Cougal Park, opened much closer to our house than the accommodation we had been using, we switched to this, as it was closer to home, closer to the rainforests, and gave us the opportunity to add coastal habitats (sandy beaches, rocky headlands, mangroves) to the tour.

Ronda has a PhD in zoology and had previously been working as a university lecturer, a research ecologist and an environmental consultant (as well as  various nature interpretation  roles). She is continuing research on the property and elsewhere, especially on  native seed dispersal by fruit-eating animals,  and continues to conduct  fauna surveys and other consultancies for local government, conservation grouops and others. She and son Darren are also the main guides on our tours.
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