Meet The East Coast Tours Team

Meet our team of travel-loving travel agents, each with their own backpacking experiences to share!

Kayleigh

Growing up in the UK, I knew I was ready for a change after I completed my degree, and that change needed to include sun, salt and sand. So, quite literally on my final day of uni in 2013, I booked a one-way ticket to Australia for a working holiday! I spent months working and exploring some of the most beautiful natural destinations I’d ever seen, like the vast orange Kimberlies, the rolling West Coast and sunburnt Uluru, and of course… I embarked on an East Coast trip! K’gari, Cairns and Airlie Beach found places in my heart, and I have returned to each many times over. I explored rainforests, 4WD down beaches, sailed the Whitsundays, dove to the depths of the Great Barrier Reef, met new mates along the way, and found work in the travel industry… an absolute dream for an adventurer like myself.

After this, I decided to make Australia my home, which it has been for the last decade! During this time, I also backpacked across New Zealand, Fiji, Thailand, Vietnam and Europe, deepening my love for adventure, travel and my nomadic lifestyle. Through it all, I can admit I’ve spent a lot of time in hostels, hotels, boats, buses, trains and planes; some great and some terrible. So, I know what it means to have a seamless, tried-and-tested itinerary rather than an “are we there yet” trip. More than anything, I just love that I get to help like-minded people chase that feeling of wanderlust for a living, connecting travellers with their dream experiences and using everything I’ve learned through 10 years of experience as a travel agent!

Maurice

Before I came to Australia in 2014 from Germany, I’d never really done any huge trips other than the odd holiday within Europe here and there. However, I took a year off my banking job for a 6-month trip Down Under and it essentially changed my whole life perspective! I visited Perth, Uluru, Byron Bay, the Whitsundays, K’gari and Cairns, falling in love with the incredible experiences and people I met along the way. I found a job in travel in Cairns, where I spent my free time discovering the Great Barrier Reef, completing my dive certs and venturing to the amazing creeks and falls of Atherton Tablelands with my Aussie housemate.

After doing a road trip to Sydney and down to the Great Ocean Road, I realised I absolutely couldn’t go back to Germany and leave this beautiful life I’d experienced behind! So, I decided to stay, found some farmwork quick-smart and dug into that for 3 months. While hard, it was totally worth it, as afterwards, I returned to Cairns where I returned to work in backpacker travel, got sponsored and lived in tropical paradise! I met my now-wife, and through the years we have scuba-dove and backpacked our way down the coast, living in Brisbane, Noosa and Melbourne. My absolute favourite moments have been under the water: swimming alongside sea turtles, night diving with sharks, spending days in the middle of remote-reef corners and being blown away by natural wonders I thought could only be glimpsed in David Attenborough docos. Now settled with my family in Airlie Beach, I’m so grateful that my job is to connect travellers with the magic and marvels of Australia that I fell in love with as a backpacker myself… it’s the dream!

Libby

I caught the travel bug when I was 18 after booking a one-way ticket from my hometown, London, to New York. I then travelled Asia and did a stint working and travelling New Zealand. By then, I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life. While I didn’t think Australia was high on my bucket list, it quickly became my home during my working holiday and apart from working remotely in Indonesia in 2022, it’s been my home since. In 2018, I got my first job in the industry managing a travel agency in Darwin, and haven’t looked back since.

My favourite thing about travelling is those moments when your phone’s dead, or you are so off-grid that you have no signal and end up stumbling upon the cutest hidden gems; saying yes to all the adventures, meeting awesome people and having an amazing time. There’s something epic about interacting with strangers who may become your best friend or who you may never see again, from all walks of life, being their best selves! Skydiving, hanging out with turtles, being on K'gari with no signal and listening to whatever songs people have downloaded, sharing a few drinks and sharing stories; I live for those moments and they make me who I am. These experiences and all of my adventures continue to shape me as a person, and I am so grateful that my job is to facilitate this for others too… for me, my job is free money, it doesn’t feel like work! I just love getting to know our customers and that moment of handing over the tickets to travellers and knowing that this experience will go down in the memory books and shape them, just as it has shaped me!

Let our well-travelled travel agents help you design your East Coast itinerary, knowing that they've been there, done that! 

Our live chat is 24/7, or send an enquiry with any questions you may have about the East Coast today!