The Person Behind the Journey
I didn't fall into adventure tourism — I ran straight at it. Straight out of school I studied adventure tourism, picked up a paddle on the Tully River in Far North Queensland, and never really looked back.
For six years I guided whitewater rafting across some of the world's most spectacular rivers — New Zealand, Nepal, Japan, North America, Norway, Central America. Rivers have a way of showing you who people really are, and I spent years watching strangers become friends, and ordinary people discover they were capable of extraordinary things.
Eventually I found my way back to New Zealand, running multi-day adventure journeys and learning the craft of building experiences that people remember long after they've unpacked their bags. Jet boats, remote landscapes, guests who came for the adrenaline and left with something they didn't expect — a deeper connection to place and to each other.
Life brought me to the Tweed Shire, and I knew immediately I was somewhere special. The hinterland, the coast, the rivers — world-class landscapes sitting quietly on Australia's doorstep, largely undiscovered by the kind of traveller who deserves to find them.
Terrain & Tide is my answer to that gap. Twenty-eight years of adventure tourism experience, distilled into a handful of carefully designed journeys through some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen — and I've seen a lot of it.
What We Believe
Adventure doesn't require suffering. Luxury doesn't require staying indoors. The best journeys sit right at the intersection of the two — where the landscape is genuinely wild, the experience is genuinely personal, and everything else is taken care of.
At Terrain & Tide, every journey is designed around one idea: that the people who travel with us should be fully present. Not worrying about logistics, not navigating alone, not wondering what comes next. Just experiencing the country the way it deserves to be experienced — with good company, good food, and a guide who genuinely loves where they're taking you.
I started this business because I miss being in the outdoors, and because sharing it with people is one of the great privileges of this work. That hasn't changed in twenty-eight years. It won't.