Australia/New Zealand
An Odyssey Down Under: Australia and New Zealand
Program No. 16434RJ
Alongside experts, discover natural wonder, Native culture and cosmopolitan cities as you learn what makes Australia and New Zealand so connected and yet both so unique.
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31 days
30 nights
73 meals
28B 22L 23D
1
In Transit to Program
In Flight
3
Arrive Auckland, Check In
Auckland
13
Lake Wakatipu Cruise to Sheep Station
Queenstown
At a Glance
Geographically isolated, rich in indigenous heritage and home to diverse and fragile ecosystems, Australia and New Zealand have much in common. Yet, separated from one another by more than 1,200 miles of open sea, they each bear distinctions that run deeper than can be perceived from afar. Find out for yourself what these island nations share and what makes each unique on this in-depth odyssey of discovery.
Activity Level
Keep the Pace
Walking up to three miles at a time over varied terrain. Standing at least three hours daily; climbing stairs, getting on/off buses, carrying own luggage. Elevations up to 3,100 feet. If you believe you require wheelchair assistance to get through an airport you are not fit enough to participate in this program.
Small Group
Love to learn and explore in a small-group setting? These adventures offer small, personal experiences with groups of 13 to 24 participants.
Best of all, you’ll…
- Learn the story of New Zealand’s settlement by Maori and Europeans.
- Witness the eruptions of spectacular geysers in the Rotorua geothermal region and experience the magnificent Piopiotahi/Milford Sound.
- Examine a delicate natural wonder — the Great Barrier Reef — and learn about efforts to protect it.
Featured Expert
All trip experts
David O'Brien
Originally from the island state of Tasmania, Dave O’Brien has lived in North Queensland for more than 30 years. Working as a biologist almost his entire career, Dave has been involved in reptile research, aquaculture, government organizations, private enterprise and owning his own business. Outside of work, Dave’s interests include birding, photography and long-distance running. He has been married since 1986 and has two adult children, presently living in Melbourne, Australia and Alberta, Canada.
Please note: This expert may not be available for every date of this program.
David O'Brien
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Originally from the island state of Tasmania, Dave O’Brien has lived in North Queensland for more than 30 years. Working as a biologist almost his entire career, Dave has been involved in reptile research, aquaculture, government organizations, private enterprise and owning his own business. Outside of work, Dave’s interests include birding, photography and long-distance running. He has been married since 1986 and has two adult children, presently living in Melbourne, Australia and Alberta, Canada.
Ruth Pullin
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Dr. Ruth Pullin wrote her Ph.D. thesis on the Australian colonial artist Eugene von Guérard and was guest curator of a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2011, “Eugene von Guérard: Nature Revealed.” She is the principal author and commissioning editor of the book of the same title. She derives great joy in discussing with Road Scholars the relationship of Australians to the land as a key way in which Australian artists have established a sense of our cultural identity.
Hamish Campbell
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Hamish Campbell earned a Ph.D. in paleontology from Cambridge University, and went on to serve as a senior scientist at GNS Science — the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences — in Wellington, New Zealand, and as geologist at the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Hamish channeled his expertise to write several popular books on New Zealand geology. His passion for New Zealand, geology and learning have made him an exceptional long-time instructor for Road Scholar.
Sue Grebenschikoff
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Sue Grebenschikoff is an instructor and site coordinator in Cairns. Originally from Sydney, Sue moved to Cairns 20 years ago after she fell in love with the tropical region. Sue has a bachelor’s degree in commerce with a concentration in marketing, is a keen gardener, and loves to travel and meet people. She has worked in various capacities for many years on award-winning wilderness adventure programs around tropical North Queensland.
Andrew Fitzgerald
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Andrew Fitzgerald is a keen astronomer with considerable experience presenting information on stars, planets, our solar system, and the galaxy to large groups. He regularly presents a session on the local radio station informing locals and visitors of current astronomical features and events. Andrew’s wealth of knowledge enhances sessions exploring the features of Southern Hemisphere skies.
Rayleen Brown
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Rayleen Brown is an Aboriginal who worked as a project officer to help Aboriginals secure their traditional land. She now owns and operates a successful catering business that’s been specializing in traditional bush products and foods for the past 10 years. In addition, Rayleen is a member of the national Bush Foods Council, an educator for schools across Central Australia and a mentor with the local Desert Leadership Program. She continues to be a strong advocate for the Aboriginal people to this day.
Peter Burns
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Peter Burns is our Site Coordinator for Melbourne, as well as being an experienced Group Leader. Peter grew up in suburban Melbourne and graduated as a civil engineer, with further qualifications in natural resource management and education. Peter has had an eclectic career, working as a civil engineer, teacher, and in National Park management. Peter has also led groups of Australians and New Zealanders on numerous trips to Scotland, Central Asia, India, and the Caucasus.
Michael Kidd
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Michael Kidd is a retired secondary school principal and teacher. After teaching mathematics at four Sydney high schools, he was appointed the principal of Hurlstone Agricultural High School, a school on 200 acres of farmland with 300 boarders, mostly from the country in New South Wales. He and his wife Robyn (also a retired secondary school principal and Road Scholar group leader) have traveled extensively with their two daughters. As group leader, Michael loves to share his passion for his homeland with Road Scholars.
Richard De Gille
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Richard De Gille has recently retired after practising as a lawyer for the past 30 years. For the last 20 years, he was a partner of a large suburban legal practice in outer Melbourne. He holds degrees from Monash University in economics and politics, education and law. In his spare time he enjoys cycling, bushwalking, gardening and reading.
Fergus Sutherland
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Fergus Sutherland lives in the Catlins region of New Zealand’s South Island. He is an award-winning conservationist who has run Catlins Wildlife Trackers Ecotours with his wife Mary for 25 years. He holds a master’s degree in geology from the University of Otago as well as a teaching diploma. Fergus was chairman of a local branch of New Zealand’s Forest and Bird Protection Society for ten years and has worked in soil conservation. His interests include painting, photography, hiking, writing and house restoration.
Margaret Copland
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Margaret Copland is a graduate of the University of Canterbury and the Christchurch College of Education. As a historian, she has enjoyed researching the stories of the early Canterbury immigrants, which she will share with us in her capacity as the Te Puna Ora storyteller. Margaret is an experienced history teacher and she has been a heritage storyteller and local historian for 20 years. Her original stories have been researched and developed to create 13 characters who bring New Zealand history to life.
Mark Pugh
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Born and raised in the Whitsunday region of North Queensland, Mark Pugh has lived in every state in Australia and worked in various arenas such as banking, engineering, hospitality, teaching, agriculture and aquaculture. He found his calling as a trek excursion leader in Tasmania nine years ago, and this has led to him basing himself in Cairns doing long-haul 4wd safaris during the cooler months. He also works with hot-air ballooning in the wetter season. In his free time, Mark enjoys trekking, diving and travel.
Robbie Selwyn
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A native of Wellington, Robbie Selwyn graduated with a commerce degree from Victoria University, and worked for ExxonMobil in financial, corporate planning and marketing roles. His career allowed him the wonderful opportunity to live and work in various locations around the world, fueling his interest in travel and international culture. An active golfer, Robbie is married and has two children and five grandchildren.
Martin Ludgate
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Martin Ludgate was a lecturer at Charles Darwin University in Alice Springs, where he lectured and managed the educational travel program. Now semi-retired (although still doing some lecturing and leading educational excursions), Martin has a keen interest in local history and culture as well as the landscapes, flora and fauna of the Northern Territory. “The great pleasure of enabling Road Scholar participants to bring alive their desire to experience a sense of Outback Australia, which they have heard so much about, makes my involvement so rewarding,” Martin says.
Ron Turner
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Ron Turner had a long career in the New Zealand Army, including serving in Vietnam and as a military attaché in Canberra. Since retiring from the army, Ron has been chief executive of a child health care provider and undertaken security and transport contracts. Ron has been a Judicial Justice of the Peace, and has been heavily involved in community activities including New Zealand and Australian Lions Clubs. A long-term Wellington resident, Ron has since moved to Auckland. Ron's interests include people, travel, and reading.
Mary Gordon
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Mary Gordon has had a career full of variety, with university qualifications in science, wildlife and park management, and occupational health and safety. Her roles across Australia have ranged from caring for reptiles at the Museum of South Australia and looking after visitors to the Northern Territory Wildlife Park to running an ecology project at the University of Melbourne and setting up her own vineyard. Having returned to South Australia, Mary is thrilled to be able to educate visitors about her homeland.
Russell Boswell
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Russell Boswell is the manager of Savannah Guides and Savannah Way Limited. A long-term Cairns resident, Russell’s background is in education and marketing. His travel career has included group and safari operation, magazine publishing, and training local experts. Russell sits on several industry committees and has been the proud recipient of a Cassowary Award for services to Wet Tropics nature-based travel.
Fiona Barker
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Fiona Barker is a senior lecturer in comparative politics at Victoria University of Wellington. Born and raised in New Zealand, she earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University and had research stays in Italy, Canada, Belgium, and France before returning to Wellington to teach and research the politics of immigration, nationalism, representation, and electoral politics. Her recent research examines topics including immigrants’ political participation and representation in New Zealand and Europe, and the role of the ethnic media in democratic politics in New Zealand.
Kate McMillan
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Kate McMillan is an associate professor in comparative politics and head of the political science and international relations program at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research and teaching focuses on immigration politics, media politics and citizenship politics, with a particular focus on New Zealand and its region. Kate grew up in Christchurch but has spent much of her adult life in Wellington, with stints also living and working in Melbourne, London, San Diego and Lund.
Peter Lawson
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Peter Lawson has lived in Wellington for 44 years after graduating from Christchurch’s Canterbury University with a Bachelor of Science in Pure Maths and Operations Research. He started his career in the Government Railways Department in their Economic Planning and Research unit when the Railways employed approximately 20,000 people. During 22 years, Peter worked as a marketing manager, in General Management, and Project Management. He then had a career change, working as a self-employed investment adviser and sharebroker before retiring in 2021.
Hazel Petrie
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Hazel Petrie is an Honorary Research Fellow in the University of Auckland Department of History. She has a and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Maori Studies, a Master of Arts in History, and a Ph.D. in Maori Studies, all from the University of Auckland. Her published books include “Chiefs of Industry: Maori Tribal Enterprise in Early Colonial New Zealand” that was a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards, and “Outcasts of the Gods?: The Struggle Over Slavery in Maori New Zealand.”
Lizzie Johnston-Walker
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Lizzie Johnston-Walker graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Bachelor of Science in zoology and microbiology. She completed a Bachelor of Nursing at Otago Polytechic and a Master of Health Sciences at the University of Otago. She has worked in clinical areas and hospitals in New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S. For the past 15 years, Lizzie has been an RN in the Intensive Care Unit at Christchurch Hospital. She is also involved in undergraduate and postgraduate nursing education at the University of Otago.
Margaret Logan
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Margaret Logan raised a family and served 23 years as a child and family social worker in Timaru. She then joined her husband, Richard, in establishing the freshwater salmon farming industry in the hydro system waters in the Mackenzie Country on the South Island. Now “retired,” she is still involved with High Country Salmon as an owner-director. Margaret loves living in Wellington where Probus activities keep her well occupied, along with walking, reading, bridge, planning for more overseas travel, and meeting with friends and family.
Ian Selwyn
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Ian Selwyn grew up in Wellington Ian and has lived on the North Shore of Auckland for more than 40 years. He held executive positions in the insurance industry before establishing a brokerage dealing in all aspects of Insurance. After selling the business, he was able to pursue his passion of rugby coaching and held a liaison role for visiting international teams. He has always had an interest in history and world affairs and has enjoyed his overseas travels including the United States of America.
Stephen Hoadley
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Stephen Hoadley is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a Life Member of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. Steve is a regular commentator on international affairs in the New Zealand media and enjoys giving public lectures to diverse audiences.
Sue Hume
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Sue Hume retired from a career as a secondary school teacher and principal. She led her school through difficult periods including the Canterbury earthquakes in 2011, the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Sue was awarded a Christchurch City Council Earthquake Award in 2012 for service during the earthquakes, a Woolf Fisher Fellowship in recognition of educational excellence in 2012, and a Queen’s Service Medal in 2022 for services to education. A keen traveler, Sue has always resided in the South Island.
Hirani Kydd
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Hirani Kydd has a background in biology and zookeeping, and began leading groups in the Wet Tropics in the mid-2010s. Hirani loves anything to do with natural history, but particularly enjoys the interconnectedness of all lifeforms within an ecosystem, and how they work together or against each other. The Wet Tropics is a fantastic place to see this. When she is not thinking about biology in a landscape, Hirani is probably thinking about geology instead.
Helen Bull
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Helen Bull grew up on a sheep farm in the South Island. After graduating with an economics and finance degree, she worked in the oil industry in New Zealand and the UK. Returning to New Zealand with her engineer husband and three children, she set up an accounting business. In her 50s, she decided to follow her passion for anthropology and history and trained as a museum docent. Concurrently, she served as the treasury administrator and advisor of a charity advocating for children in poverty.
Jill Bunning
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Jill Bunning originally trained as a school teacher before moving into travel over 40 years ago. For many years she was based in the UK and Europe, organizing and personally leading groups for various companies. Now back in Australia, Jill enjoys welcoming Road Scholar visitors to Sydney. She speaks conversational German and Italian and loves spending time with her family and attending the many shows that Sydney has to offer.
Evan France
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Evan France retired in 2023, ending a three-decade career as a secondary school teacher. Prior to embarking on a teaching career, Evan spent 15 years living on Rakiura Stewart Island - New Zealand's third-largest island - where he variously worked for the Department of Conservation on the kakapo program, as a group leader, commercial fisherman, and as a partner in a salmon farm. Evan and his wife live in Invercargill where he coaches volleyball and rowing and enjoys mountain biking, orienteering, and golf in his spare time.
Julian Thomson
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Julian Thomson has a background in geology and an interest in the outdoors. For about 15 years, he was a secondary school science teacher in Lower Hutt near Wellington, before taking up a position as the educational outreach facilitator at GNS Science in 2008. In 2020, he started his own geoscience communication and education consultancy.
Mark Grant
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Mark Grant lives beside Royal Park in central Melbourne and has a deep knowledge of the city, its planning history, and its broader connection to rural Victoria. In addition to a five-week self-directed trek through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, he previously traveled widely across Europe and Southeast Asia. He enjoys creative writing, music, photography, camping, and cycling. Mark is a member of the Friends of Royal Park and the Montrose Environmental Co-operative, which maintains a reserve west of the Grampians National Park at Wartook.
Pat Bonisch
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Pat Bonisch has lived in Christchurch for nearly three decades. He is retired after a career in the banking industry and more recently in the financial services sector. Over the last two decades, he has traveled extensively throughout New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Asia, and North America. His interests include running, golf, rugby, cycling, photography, hiking, and the arts. He enjoys meeting new people from all walks of life.
Suggested Reading List
(21 books)
Visit the Road Scholar Bookshop
You can find many of the books we recommend at the Road Scholar store on bookshop.org, a website that supports local bookstores.
An Odyssey Down Under: Australia and New Zealand
Program Number: 16434
The Penguin History of New Zealand
This bestselling book is arguably the definitive contemporary reference to the history of New Zealand. New Zealand was the last country in the world to be discovered and settled by humankind. It was also the first to introduce full democracy. Between those events, and in the century that followed the franchise, the movements and conflicts of human history have been played out more intensively and more rapidly in New Zealand than anywhere else on Earth. The Penguin History of New Zealand tells that story in all its colour and drama. The narrative that emerges is an inclusive one about men and women, Maori and Pakeha. It shows that British motives in colonising New Zealand were essentially humane; and that Maori, far from being passive victims of a 'fatal impact', coped heroically with colonisation and survived by selectively accepting and adapting what Western technology and culture had to offer.
Dirt Music, A Novel
Among Australia's finest writers, Tim Winton fashions powerful and elegant tales set within the arid outback of Western Australia. An alcoholic mother and a down-on-his luck poacher are the protagonists of this recent novel, where landscape and nature play just as much a role as the characters themselves.
Stories
This collection includes three marvelous, long pieces which together constitute the beginnings of an unfinished novel based on Mansfield's childhood in Wellington, New Zealand in the 1890s.
The Turning, New Stories
These 17 overlapping stories, steeped in everyday life on western Australia, follow the fates of a handful of characters in a small coastal town outside Perth. Winton, short-listed twice so far for the Booker Prize, has published a string of memorable novels, children's books and stories, all richly set in the working class milieu of the sparsely populated coastal desert.
In A Sunburned Country
Bill Bryson revels in Australia's eccentric characters, dangerous flora and fauna, and other oddities. As has become his custom, he effortlessly imparts much fact-filled history in this wildly funny book. Included at the end is a short bibliography. This book is published as "Down Under" in Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain.
Songlines
Rory Stewart provides the introduction to this 25th anniversary edition of Bruce Chatwin's celebrated travelogue, which is as much about its gifted author - and the meaning of travel - as about the Aboriginal people and their ways of life. Chatwin transforms a journey through the Outback into an exhilarating, semi-fictional meditation on our place in the world.
True History of the Kelly Gang
A powerful, daring novel, steeped in the colonial history of late 19th-century Australia. Outlaw, folk hero, thief and patriot, the Irish immigrant Ned Kelly and his clan figure large in the Australian mindset. Carey's Booker Prize-winning novel (his second after "Oscar & Lucinda") takes the form of a series of rough, captivating letters by the barely literate gang leader to his young daughter. Kelly was hanged in Melbourne in 1880, where his mother was also imprisoned.
Zealandia: The Valley That Changed A Nation
In 1990 James Lynch QSM conceived the idea of urban conservation through a plan to `Bring the Birds back to Wellington'. Two years later he came up with the daring concept of community conservation. His visionary 1992 proposal for the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary (now Zealandia) imagined a predator-fenced, community-driven eco-sanctuary, populated with endangered species and located 2 km from the Wellington CBD. 30 years later Zealandia is a resounding success and Wellington has been transformed into an international showcase of urban conservation. Inspired by Zealandia, eco-sanctuaries proliferated around the nation. This is Jim's account of how Zealandia became a reality and changed a city and a nation. An uplifting account of daring innovation, and of the determination of an ever-expanding community that built a jewel that will be treasured by generations yet to be born.
The Bone People
Set in modern-day South Island, this lyrical novel brings together three troubled individuals who represent New Zealand’s varied Maori and European traditions. Winner of the 1985 Booker Prize.
The Luminaries
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. The Luminaries, an extraordinary work of fiction, was the Man Booker prize winner in 2013.
Dark Emu : Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture
History has portrayed Australia's First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong. Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early Australian explorers and colonists, Bruce Pascoe reveals that Aboriginal systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required - for the benefit of us all. Dark Emu, a bestseller in Australia, won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.
Fairness and Freedom, A History of Two Open Societies, New Zealand and the United States
Fischer compares the political similarities of two societies, the United States and New Zealand, why they have taken different forms, and asks the question: is it possible to be both fair and free? An expansion of Fischer's previous work on liberty and freedom, and the first book to be published on the history of fairness.
Aboriginal Art
This well illustrated survey of Aboriginal art, ancient and modern, focuses on the spiritual and geographic sources of art and ritual traditions in Australia. It covers the range of art from all parts of the continent, including a chapter on the Wandjina rock art of the Kimberley region. The concise text is augmented by 187 well produced black-and-white and color illustrations.
The ANZAC Girls: The Extraordinary Story of Our World War I Nurses
The harrowing, dramatic and profoundly moving story of the Australian and New Zealand nurses who served in the Great War. Profoundly moving, Anzac Girls is a story of extraordinary courage and humanity shown by a group of women whose contribution to the Anzac legend has barely been recognised in our history. Peter Rees has changed that understanding forever.
Whale Rider
A magical, mythical novella about a young Maori girl and her relationship with a whale, that ultimately saves her village. Based loosely on Ihimaera’s youth in a Maori village.
Chasing Kangaroo
An ode to the kangaroo in all their splendid diversity and oddity. Revisiting his early love of kangaroo fossils, Flannery weaves engaging tales of his adventures on the trails of marsupials past and present with his travels and encounters with eccentric scientists and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Purakau: Maori Myths retold by Maori Writers
A lively retelling of Purakau - Maori Myths - by contemporary Maori Writers.
A Commonwealth of Thieves, The Improbable Birth of Australia
With drama and flair, novelist Keneally illuminates the birth of New South Wales in 1788, richly evoking the social conditions in London, the miserable sea voyage and the desperate conditions of the new colony. His tale revolves around Arthur Phillip, the ambitious (and bland) captain in the Royal Navy who would become the first governor of New South Wales. You may be familiar with Keneally as the author of the acclaimed work (made into an equally-renowned film) "Schindler's List".
A Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand
Comprehensive and compact, this Princeton Pocket Guide by longtime resident Julian Fitter and Don Merton at New Zealand's Department of Conservation features 600 color photographs. With range maps, descriptions and excellent introductory chapters on conservation efforts and key national parks for bird watching
Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance
From rural New Zealand at the end of World War I to the present day, two separate love stories resonate across three generations, as two very different couples are brought together by their obsession with the seductive power of the tango. By the author of the critically acclaimed Mr. Pip, this earlier novel was first published in New Zealand in 2002.
Bradt Australian Wildlife
A guide not just to kangaroo and koala, this compact, illustrated survey, featuring 250 color photographs, takes in habitats, parks and conservation, marsupials, birds and bats.