Treetops Tour Guide
We meet Juan Carlos Rodriguez, a tour guide as part of Hollybank Treetops Adventure.
We find out just what's involved in a treetops adventure, what it's like being a tour guide and why he loves working in tourism!
He has a passion for music and thinks his tour guide job at Hollybank is more like a hobby than work. Carlos received a lot of training on the job in first aid, OH&S and rigging ropes and abseiling harness and working at heights skills.
He also completed an Eco-Adventure and Guiding course at Drysdale TAFE in Tasmania. He mainly says if you want to get into this type of work you have to be enthusiastic and like to interact and have a good time with people.
Carlos doesn’t stick to a particular formula for his tours but prefers to cater the experience to the crowd. Some people want the adventure experience and others want information about the wildlife.
In essence the focus of the guides job is to provide an exciting and educational experience for the guests keeping in mind that safety takes precedence, particularly in this type of high adventure extreme sport.
To work at Hollybank you need a range of skills from working at heights and OH&S to communicating with the public about environmental and historical knowledge of the local area.
About Hollybank Treetops Adventure:
Hollybank Treetops Adventure is Tasmania’s newest tourism venture. Visitors glide across the treetops in this forest canopy tour, gaining a bird's-eye view of Tasmania's beautiful forests. It lasts 3 hours and is unlike any other Australian nature experience.
Gliding along wires and attached by harnesses, thrill-seekers are led by knowledgeable and highly-trained guides through the treetops and above the Pipers River.
They involve taking tourists up into the forest canopy and traversing between treehouse-type platforms along steel cables. The platforms, called 'cloud stations' are constructed around the trunks of large trees, within the mid canopy level of the forest - typically at heights up to 30m above the forest floor.
Cables are then anchored between platforms at a slight downward angle. The distances between the platforms vary from 15 metres to 372 metres. Clients are kitted out in harnesses with pulleys attached and slide along the cables through the forest canopy and land safely at the next platform.
The reserve includes both native and exotic forests. The English atmosphere created at Hollybank is due to its name, its history and its trees, one of the earliest private plantations in Tasmania consisting of European trees. One of these species was originally planted to obtain wood for the construction of cricket bats.
