I arrived on Tamborine Mountain in January 1991 and after a couple of whirlwind years, I opened Travelling Places. If anyone had told me 30 years ago that I would still be living on the Mountain, let alone running a retail travel agency, I would have told them they were mad. Moving from central London to Tamborine was certainly a lifestyle change! I have now lived here longer than anywhere in the world, and I love it.

Born in England, my early childhood was in Nigeria, West Africa … I guess a bit of Africa has always stayed in my heart. When clients come in talking about a safari, the Victoria Falls, gorilla watching or visiting the Cape, I always warn them that Africa is addictive. Once you have visited there is an overwhelming desire to return time and time again to explore other regions of this vast continent. As a young child we moved to Brisbane for a few years before heading to New Zealand as a teenager. With a brief stint in Connecticut, I moved to London in my early twenties and had every intention of living my life in the heart of Europe. In those days I worked as a product development manager for British Airways, travelling the globe, researching and contracting hotels and touring companies, writing and producing holiday brochures and all of this in the time pre the internet!
Leaving corporate life behind, I wondered what to do... I opened a small office in Old Eagle Heights near the bakery, with a desk and a phone. My first client booked an around the world trip and I thought: ‘this business will work’. After twelve months I moved my business to 24 Main Street – a busier area for locals to shop, in the days when there was a butcher in Main Street and our supermarket was where Wolf restaurant now is. How times have changed. The desktop computer came later. Email was something people were starting to talk about, but it was not in regular use until the mid-90’s. E-commerce really didn’t start until the early 2000’s. It’s hard to imagine now that everything was researched and booked manually.
The travel industry has changed enormously over the years and when we transitioned to e-commerce, we all thought that was to be the biggest change we would see. And then came COVID – it completely shut down the industry for over two years, in fact it was worse than that: those of us that hung on spent our days processing refunds and talking to clients and suppliers to find resolutions for everyone who had booked.
When the borders came down, the flood gates opened. We have been tremendously busy for the best part of a year. There is enormous demand for travel – a lot of people feel they missed out on two years of exploring the world and are now trying to recoup that lost time. Travel is now busier than before COVID struck.
Travel is a great industry – we spend out days designing your holidays, your treats for all the hard work. We have wonderful clients that now spread the width of Australia and even some that live abroad. I thank the community for your support over the years. In thirty years, I have employed well over 20 locals and today there are four of us in the office, beavering away and having fun doing so. Thank you for keeping us all in jobs! Do come to celebrate with us Wednesday 31st May from 5pm to 6.30pm – we hope to welcome past, present and future clients. We would be delighted to see you!