• Friends provide environmental education tours

Barry Muir

Friends of Cairns Botanic Gardens offer three types of nature tours within the Cairns Botanic Gardens: free daily nature tours (Monday to Friday); pre-booked formal (paid) Nature Tours for tour companies, clubs and educational groups; and a free bird-watching tour on Tuesdays. All are coordinated and run by Friends members (volunteers). Tour companies and some associations are charged a fee per person. Dates, times and duration of pre-booked tours are as required by the customer and are led by the same volunteers that do the daily unpaid tours. Some tours require up to five or six volunteer guides, depending on the size of the group involved. These tours are undertaken by the volunteers in addition to their normal daily tours. All income from these pre-booked tours is managed by the Friends treasurer and used for improvements to the Gardens. For schools and college groups, the fee is sometimes waived or reduced to encourage environmental education. During the past year customers have included four community support groups (Mates4Mates, Salvation Army, Literacy for Life and the Cancer Council), three specialist groups (Cairns Beekeepers, South Australian Bird Photographers and Japanese University combined tour on medicinal plant biochemistry), one Government agency (Department of Fisheries), and five commercial operators. Free nature tours start at 10am every weekday and leave from the Friends House within Flecker Garden. Duration is one hour but is sometimes extended. These tours are interactive and occasionally a visitor, with knowledge in a particular plant family or genus, contributes to the tour; an added benefit to everyone including the volunteer guide. Currently there are 10 guides, each with experience in different aspects of gardening or botany. Consequently, some visitors return for second or third tours with different guides. Visitor feedback suggests that the guides are excellent and the tours are among the best in Australia. Bird-watching tours are held every Tuesday morning at 8.30am and duration can be up to three hours. These free tours are led by local birdwatchers with years of experience in the region. They have great ability in not only spotting and identifying birds in the field, but also in identifying birds by their call and knowing the locations within the Gardens where particular species reside and/ or nest. Photography is a major feature of the bird tours. Paid tours and donations raise over $3000 a year for the Gardens which is used for improvements and purchase of plants. The primary aim is to have visitors going away saying “wow – what a great botanic garden”, and maybe the conservation message takes another small step forward.

Friends Guide Barry showing a visitor one of the Handkerchief Trees with its soft new pendulous foliage.