Our History

On the first of March 1981 I left Australia to backpack around Europe, not knowing when I would ever return home. After becoming a tour guide in Europe for a company called Tracks, they offered me the opportunity to travel though Africa as the support driver on an Overland Expedition from London to Johannesburg by road (18 weeks)!

From the moment I set foot in Africa I was completely hooked. Disembarking from the ferry in Morocco into the colour and sounds and smells of north Africa, I was enthralled. The vastness of the continent stretched before us, with all its mystery and adventure. And that was 2 months before we reached East Africa with all its amazing wildlife.

Little did I realise that this trip would completely change my life. I encountered challenges I had never previously dreamt of. I experienced things that many only read about in books. I also met my future wife Sara on this trip, and together 3 years later we would start African Wildlife Safaris.
Travel in 1982 was completely different from today. There were no mobile phones, and of course no internet. The only means of communication was the post (or rather post-restante) or a rare and very brief phone call from a city post office in the case of an emergency. So basically, we had no communication with our family and friends for the entire 18 weeks.

The African overland expeditions which ran in the early 1980s involved travelling by 4WD army truck that had been re-designed to provide seats in the back for 18 passengers. They were led by a driver/expedition leader and co-driver. We set up camp every night, usually by the side of the road in a clearing, or on a village football pitch (nearly every village had one!) And because we were constantly travelling almost every night was in a different place. When we reached a major town or city, we stayed two to three nights to stock up on supplies and sort out visas for the next country we were to pass through. We purchased all our food and provisions along the way, and everyone shared duties from cooking to cutting firewood and even guard duty.

Whenever we camped near any populated areas, we had to guard the camp at night as petty thieving could be a problem. As I was in charge of guard duty, I would roster Sara on with me for the 02:00am to 04:00am night shift. It’s safe to say that the rest is history and by the time we got to East Africa we had embarked on our very own “Out of Africa” love story. So, both Kenya and Tanzania hold a special place in our hearts.

These expeditions were very different from the comfortable safaris our company offers today! Africa in the early 80’s was remote and wild with nothing like the tourism infrastructure there is now. There were giant mud bogs and sandy deserts to navigate, rivers to fjord, visa to be obtained enroute, borders to be crossed, torrential rain and at times unbearable heat (Sudan). And there was political unrest in some of the many African countries we travelled through. So overall we had all sorts of exciting, and sometimes daunting, experiences.

For my second overland expedition, from Nairobi via the Sudan to Egypt, I was promoted to lead driver. However, my support driver (also the mechanic) failed to turn up, so Sara ended up being my 2IC and assistant mechanic! This was a nine week expedition through some of the wildest country we had seen in Africa, particularly in South Sudan (now an independent country). The Nile River in Sudan still floods every year, unlike in Egypt, and the country is impassable during the wet season. We encountered some fascinating ethnic tribal peoples, like the Dinka, the Nuer and the Shilluk. Once in Egypt we followed the Nile, visiting all the amazing temples and tombs on our way to Cairo. This was one of our most remarkable and memorable adventures.

Returning to Melbourne, Australia, Sara and I started African Wildlife Safaris in January 1985. Our aim from the beginning was to offer amazing safaris for our clients, and at the same time to support those ground operators who were committed to Conservation. We also believed extremely strongly in protecting our clients’ monies and have operated a fully functional Trust Account since 1987.

We already had a fascination for Africa’s wildlife and had visited most of the major wildlife parks in East Africa. However, in 1986 we visited a small lodge on Fothergill Island in Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe. Unlike the large lodges we were used to this was very rustic and open to the surrounding bush. Each guest rondavel had a thatched roof and was enclosed by a wall just a few feet high. The bed had a romantically draped mosquito net and the ensuite bathroom was open to the sky, with a shower and toilet surrounded by a bush fence. There was even a bright green tree frog in the shower! It was heaven!
The next day we undertook our first ever guided walking safari, accompanied by one of Zimbabwe’s most experienced guides. We probably only walked a few kilometres, but we learnt more about the African bush on that walk than on all our previous safaris. And we came face to face with our first ever elephant while on foot – a truly awesome experience and one that I have since never tired of.

Over the next 10-12 years we developed a complete program of safaris, building relationships with many of the operators we still use today and gaining a reputation for custom designing itineraries to suit individual client’s requirements.

But my own speciality was designing walking safaris to remote parts of east and southern Africa and during that time I escorted some exceptional safaris with just a handful of clients on each trip. We explored areas few Europeans have ever visited and were supported by excellent specialist ground operators. For even more excitement I generally added on a canoeing trip at the start or end of the walk, and to this day, my favourite trip in Africa is canoeing the Zambezi River.

In 1999, now with a young family I thought I was spending too much time indulging in my passion for walking and canoeing trips, so Sara and I turned our attention to broadening our product range. In 2000 we created Natural Focus, offering wildlife and wilderness trips to other amazing destinations around the world like India and Canada & Alaska. By this time, we had already turned African Wildlife Safaris into one of the leading safari companies in Australia, creating complex custom designed itineraries for our clients.

By 2002 it was time to take our young kids to Africa, South America and Antarctica, so for next 8-10 years, we invited other families to join us. We would take 6 to 16 friends and acquaintances at a time, and of course the trips always focused on terrific experiences for both young kids and adults! We even chartered boats for our adventures – a cruise around the Galapagos islands, and an expedition ship to Antarctica. Travelling with children is a truly wonderful way to see these amazing places through innocent eyes! It is also the perfect way to spend quality time together, and in recent years family trips and even intergenerational trips have become hugely popular. Sharing new and amazing experiences, particularly in wild places, is the best way to build lasting relationships and life-long memories. It can be as simple as just sitting around the campfire and chatting over the day’s adventures!

We must have inspired our two boys, because both James and Jeremy now work in the company, so we are truly a family business. And our family is broader than the four of us, with most of our staff having been with us for over 7 years and 3 staff members have even been with us since 1993!

Creating Natural Focus has broadened our product range incredibly to include much of the world. Wildlife is still our focus, and we offer some wonderful trips to see tigers in India, grizzly bears and polar bears in Canada and Alaska, jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal, puma tracking in Argentina and marine wildlife in a range of destinations.

Since 2011 we have consolidated African Wildlife Safaris and Natural Focus, and our focus is firmly on custom designing trips for our clients.

With our kids having grown up some of the trips during this period have been with friends, so they too can get to experience what we have. In fact, travelling with friends has been an increasing trend over the past 10-15 years. So we know what it’s like to travel with like-minded people and still remain friends! I recommend a core trip of 9-14 nights (depending on how much time everyone has available). The core trip is generally the destination everyone wants to do (for example the Serengeti or the Okavango. Because even close friends will have different needs, budgets and preferences on how to travel, concentrating on the core trip is really the only way everyone will be able to agree! Then if people want to go earlier or stay later to do other things, for example to see the gorillas or extend to Cape Town this can be much more easily arranged.

One of our disappointments around this time was not being able to launch our Australian product in 2015. We had even produced a 56 page brochure, and everything was ready to go. However, the ebola crisis in west Africa was causing a lot of consternation, and even though our safari destinations were all quite safe to visit, many people felt nervous and travel slowed down. So we abandoned our plans to launch a whole new destination, and concentrated on keeping our core business sound. Once the Ebola crisis finished, we were so busy with our other destinations we didn’t have time to launch the Australia program. However, in 2020 another virus caused worldwide panic, and the time was right for Australia.