East Gippsland Wildlife Journey

Day 1: Melbourne to East Gippsland

After departing Melbourne in the morning, you will venture east to the beautiful Lakes District in Gippsland. This region is protected by the International Ramsar Convention and is a key habitat for waterbirds such as Black Swans, Chestnut Teals, Australian Shelducks, Musk Ducks, as well as Fairy Terns.

Shortly after, board a ferry to Raymond Island that provides sanctuary to a host of native animals. You will assist in helping a wild koala research project on the island. Data collated will include tree species preference, behaviour, identification of individuals and evidence of koalas drinking stemflow.  Take walks through local forest, with Koalas, echidnas, Swamp Wallabies and Eastern Grey Kangaroos, parrots, honeyeaters and seabirds all sighting opportunities. Driving through lush eucalypt forests, pristine estuaries and white sandy beaches, you will assist in helping the wildlife guide in recording species for conservation purposes.

Dinner tonight is at a local restaurant with lunch also included. Accommodation is a homestead in a small town where you will stay for three nights.

Accommodation: Snowy River Homestead, Orbost, or similar.

Day 2 & 3: Platypus, Rainforest Birds & Wilderness Coast

The diverse forests and wilderness coast of East Gippsland are the reason that wildlife is so abundant. Over these two days you will visit both dry and wet forests, visit the famous Snowy River, and walk beside a wilderness creek where the landscape changes dramatically from the sunny, dry slopes to the near-rainforest of the gully.

Your Wildlife Guide provides detailed information of the formation of these mighty forests, and helps you search for Lyrebirds, parrots, goannas, wallabies and honeyeaters. Birds and reptiles are abundant, but other human visitors are few.

You walk into a large lowland (warm temperate) rainforest in search of birds including Topknot Pigeons, Superb Lyrebirds, Brown Gerygones, Black-faced Monarchs and Platypus and Swamp Wallabies. Then walk through a heathland and along a forest-lined river – this area abuts a previously burnt area, so wildlife surveys here are particularly important.

You will search for White-bellied Sea Eagles, Hooded Plovers, Gang-gang cockatoos, Turquoise Parrots, Azure Kingfishers and Jacky Lizards, before visiting a quiet beach with a complex dune system, where beach and ocean-going birds are frequently seen along with Australian Fur-seals.

Nearby rocky headlands along the coast provide the opportunity to peer into rock pools, walk past wind-sculpted coastal shrubs and view the expanse of the 90 mile beach. You will spend a little time on a beautiful beach removing Sea Spurge, an invasive introduced plant. You'll also remove fishing "ghost" nets that have washed in from the sea. The idea is to stop them washing back out, where they trap and kill sea creatures.

On one night, go spotlighting searching for night creatures including Greater and Yellow-bellied gliders, possums, bandicoots and other nocturnal creatures. 

Dine both days at classic Aussie pub over looking the mouth of the Snowy River. (B,L,D included)

Accommodation: Snowy River Homestead, Orbost, or similar

Day 4: Melbourne to East Gippsland: Mouth of the Snowy River & Krowathunkoolong

Depart East Gippsland after one last visit to the beach at the Mouth of the Snowy River. On the way back to Melbourne, a visit to Krowathunkoolong Keeping Place, an informative Aboriginal Cultural Centre in Bairnsdale, provides an opportunity to learn about how the Aboriginal people have lived amongst these captivating landscapes for thousands of years. Following this, you will venture to a river in Bairnsdale to spot Grey-headed Flying-foxes in their daytime roosts, before arriving in Melbourne.

Tour details:

Group Size: Maximum of 8 guests.
Pick-up and Drop Off Point: Melbourne city hotels
Pick-up and Drop-off Time:  8:00am on day one, Approximately 5:00pm on day four.
Private Touring: Available at additional cost - please enquire with your group size & interests.

Please note: Tour does not run 23rd December & 30th December.

Recent Awards

WINNER Best for Wildlife Conservation at the World Responsible Tourism Awards London • 2014
WINNER Seatrade Cruise Award for World’s Most Innovative Shore Excursion • 2017
WINNER TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014

How you'll be making a positive impact

Citizen Science with Echidna Walkabout Nature Tours

Echidna Walkabout Nature Tours contributes observations of flora & fauna via iNaturalist, the world’s leading global social biodiversity network. This platform allows our team to create research-quality citizen science data that enables a more detailed picture of our national biodiversity, and assists bodies such as the CSIRO, ecologists and other decision makers to deliver better outcomes for the environment and our species.

Our guides record observations with iNaturalist Australia by using the iNaturalist app on mobile phones or desktop computers. An observation records an encounter with an individual organism at a particular time and location in Victoria. We require photos to be attached to observations for them to become research grade and added to the Atlas of Living Australia.

This is where you can greatly assist us in capturing images out in the field! Although we make broader observations that we think are valuable to the local scientific community, we have identified the following species to track when we are exploring Victoria by vehicle or on foot.

Key species we're looking out for include:

• Sooty Oystercatcher
• Platypus
• Powerful Owl
• Southern Emu-wren
• Short-beaked Echidna
• Lyrebird
• Glossy Black-Cockatoo
• Gang-gang Cockatoo
• Grey-headed Flying Fox

Removing Ghost Net and Sea Spurge from East Gippsland

On the East Gippsland Wildlife Journey, guests are offered the opportunity to remove Sea Spurge (an invasive weed) or removing fishing nets (ghost nets) to prevent marine entanglements of fish, birds and sea mammals.

Sea Spurge (Euphorbia paralias) is a semi-succulent plant producing short-lived stems each year. It has become a widespread weed of coastal habitats and offshore islands (particularly dune systems) in the temperate regions of Australia, often becoming the dominant plant species, It is consequently changing the structure and dynamics of sand dune systems, replacing native plant species, and decreasing the availability of beach nesting sites for shore birds and other animals.

Ghost Net, otherwise known as discarded fishing net, washes up on the beach from Bass Strait or the Southern Ocean. The project commenced in 2013 when copious amounts of the orange netting could be found across the rocky headland of Cape Conran.Without removal, the net poses an ongoing hazard to wildlife, as it can wash back and forth, putting species such as albatrosses, fur-seals or dolphins at risk. Over time, it also degrades into smaller pieces that fill the bellies of seabirds, causing them to starve.

With equipment provided such as bags, gardening gloves and heavy duty scissors, almost all guests have eagerly contributed to the clean-up project. Initially, the piles of Ghost Net were so large & heavy that it was impossible to move in one go and it was necessary to cut the net up into manageable pieces. Over recent years, given the large volume of garbage bags of netting removed, it has now become a challenge to find Ghost Net on Cape Conran, with alternative locations now being scouted.

Sustainable Koala Watching Code

Echidna Walkabout Nature Tours has been at the forefront of policy development for responsible Koala viewing based on over 27 years of research. In 2006, the organisation launched the Sustainable Koala Watching Code, implementing a welfare policy for guides, researchers and staff members in order to reduce human behaviours that cause Koalas to respond negatively as much as possible. 

This includes policies such as maintaining a distance of 10 metres (horizontally) from any wild Koala, never surrounding a Koala’s tree and avoiding excessive movement or noise around wild Koalas.

Interestingly, a recent scientific study has found that even captive Koalas subjected to people at close proximity (5 metres) do experience higher levels of stress than when people are further away, highlighting the importance of this requirement. Given that the organisation often visits and studies the same Koalas on a regular basis, this code has enabled a positive, or at least benign relationship to form with these wild Koalas.

Discovering the Nose Patterns of Koalas

In 1998 Echidna Walkabout’s co-founder Janine Duffy discovered a revolutionary method of identifying individual Koalas through their distinctive natural black and white marking patterns inside their nostrils. That discovery launched a non-intrusive wild Koala Research Project that continues to this day.

The study documenting nose markings over 22 years and across more than 100 individual Koalas in four locations in southern Victoria, showed that the nose pattern stays essentially the same throughout life, with no two Koala patterns being identical. This method provides a cost-effective and reliable non-intrusive process of monitoring wild Koala populations and has since been embraced by Koala research groups across Australia. Koalas are identified by observation at a distance, through binoculars, without the need for tagging, handling or causing stress to individual animals.

Every wild Koala sighted in the You Yangs or Brisbane Ranges National Parks has been photographed, named & identified, their sex established, location taken and tree species and height in tree noted. The Wild Koala Research Project is Echidna Walkabout’s own initiative, and fully funded by their social enterprise structure, with Koala researchers employed to input data, conduct research analysis and reconnaissance. This ensures a high degree of success with Koala sightings and adds valuable monitoring data to each day’s sightings.

Supporting the Koala Clancy Foundation

Echidna Walkabout Nature Tours created, and remains the primary supporter of, the not-for-profit Koala Clancy Foundation. The foundation is set up to support, advocate and plant trees for wild koalas, particularly around the You Yangs and on the Western Plains of Victoria. Started in 2015, the charity relies on the donations and promotional reach of international travellers, and the willing hands of local volunteers and private landowners to restore koala habitat to the rivers and creeks of western Victoria.