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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

  • Ecosystem Guide Books

    Accompanying our biology programmes and tours are the Ecosystem Guide Books. The first in the series, "Rainforest of tropical Australia", has been released. It is available in all good bookstores in Cairns and in souvenir shops and info centres throughout the rainforest areas of North Queensland. If they haven't got it, ask them to order it in! It's RRP is $35.

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Plants

Melstomids
The family includes the genus Tibouchina, which provides the popular garden Lasiandras. Most species are found in the neotropics of South and Central America, but the family is distributed throughout the tropics of the world including Australia.
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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

Platypus

platypus
Platypus
The Platypus is probably most famous for the fact that it was initially thought to be a hoax. It was thought to be a fake because it combined the fur of a mammal, but the bill and webbed feet of a duck. The size of the animal varies, but is always a lot smaller than people first think.

 

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