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Educational Tours Australia

Educational Tours Australia (ETA) runs nature-based and other educational tours and programmes for schools, universities, colleges, and various special interest groups.

students at a waterhole

Tours and programmes include our 3, 7 & 10 day biology & ecosystems study programme , and our more holiday based activity & sightseeing tour . There are also some "Trip reports" of our previous tours and programmes.

We are a small company with biology and ecotourism qualified staff . When you make enquiries, you will be dealing with the guides directly. Apart from our set itineraries, given enough lead time we can also develop an itinerary for your group that focuses on many different special interest subjects, including ecotourism, birdwatching and geological study. We also hire out Damon Ramsey and Jane Moores to tour companies and organizations as Biology and Ecotourism guides & lecturers.

ETA is based in Cairns (North Queensland) and specializes in what we think is the best part of Australia. However, our itineraries have also included other parts of the country.

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Study Tours

  • Biology of Tropical Australia

    This tour combines marine biology, botany, zoology and ecology into a full 10 day tour programme of tropical ecosystems. It is designed to take in as wide range of ecosystems as possible, going from the deeper water reefs, along the coastal beaches and mangroves, into the lowland rainforest, up into the mountain forests, and finally into the savanna woodlands and wetlands of the outback.

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Plants

Ferns
Ferns are an ancient group of plants that need a very moist environment in which to reproduce. They disperse by tiny dust-like spore that are released from sporophylls, small structures that are usually found on the underside of the frond (leaf). As would be expected from the wettest part of Australia, the highest diversity of ferns on the continent is in the north-eastern Queensland 'wet tropics'. Thus, ferns are a very obvious and dominant part of the tropical rainforest.
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Birds

Herons
Egret
Egret
This group includes the herons, night herons, egrets and bitterns. All of these birds are in the heron family, and the terms ‘heron’ and ‘egret’ are often used interchangeably and mean different things in different parts of the world for different people. They are only common names and do not currently correspond to any scientific or biological grouping. The original historical definition of the name 'egret' came from certain species of white egrets that were hunted for their filamentous plumes, or 'aigrette' and this is where the name egret come from. Many of the Ardea species are large, rather elegant mainly whitish birds that all look rather similar. They usually wade through shallow water in slow movements, often freezing, looking for fish and other underwater prey and snatching them suddenly with sharp beaks.
 

Mammals

Gliders
Gliders are usually grey or brown in colour, with a bushy tail and a darkish stripe on the back that often extends to the forehead. They are referred to as the ‘wrist–winged gliders’, as most have a loose flap of skin between the wrist and ankle on the same side.
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