Guides

From a young age Joe could be found exploring the countryside seeking hidden natural treasures. Childhood was a period filled with enchantment and learning. Home life was free and stimulating with artistic inspiration from those who lived and worked in my father’s pottery. Our routine was different from most other kids my age and I loved it…Morning hours were consumed with mums home schooling and the afternoons belonged to me, and how they linger in my memories…

Growing up in a small remote valley afforded many opportunities to marvel at nature’s wonders. I fished in our stream, sat silently as birds flitted between branches around me, watched platypuses play and made funny little animals out of clay. Those afternoons felt like days. It was a formative period of my life before our family moved to Dunalley in 1988, I was ten years old.

From the age of 14 I began introducing visitors to Tasmanian wildlife and the lifestyle we enjoy here. This continued during high school education before I embarked on a working holiday at a prestigious country estate in the heart of the Cottswolds, England. I was involved in wildlife management and guided nature-based activities. Upon my return to Tasmania I was invited to work for the internationally acclaimed private fly-fishing destination of London Lakes Lodge in Tasmania’s central highlands. This provided me with further opportunities to explore and educate others through exposure to wild places and their native inhabitants.

Text book learning has never been a strength of mine. Watching, talking and spending time with others, often quite a bit older than myself, provides me with the most applicable and enjoyable form of learning. Despite a dislike of formal learning my fascination with nature and wild places urged me to discover more. I studied science at the University of Tasmania, completing a degree with double majors in Zoology and Botany. I have found it rewarding to be able to draw upon knowledge received at university and to pass this on to guests visiting Tasmania. My passion for the outdoor lifestyle, wild places, fly fishing, photography and wildlife has convinced me that Tasmania will always captivate me, this is my home. We are blessed to have such varied ecosystems within our small, unique island and I feel it is my duty to show others how fortunate we are and to reveal some of the secrets I have found.

Now 21 years of age Vanessa began tour guiding as a young teenager. She started taking small groups on day trips to Bangor. Her special interest has always been the history of the Colony and the life of the indigenous peoples of this land. With a clear vision of what she wanted to do she completed an outdoor recreation and tour guiding course at the Drysdale campus of the TAFE college in Hobart . Vanessa then spent a season guiding on Tasmania’s North East Coast and on the Tasmanian Overland Track with an established tour company before returning to Potters Croft to take over the management side of the accommodation and craft gallery business.

In her early teens she started playing music. At first violin lessons, then she moved to playing guitar, mandolin, harmonica and singing. As a child she was too shy to even tell people her name, somehow she developed the confidence to perform her own songs in public. For the past 3 years she has been playing with a friend who also plays guitar, sings and writes songs. Together they form the duo Shimyrrh and play the Tasmanian festival circuit, weddings and private functions. You might just hear a song by the log fire at Potters Croft or around the camp fire on the Bangor Way Tour. Oh and by the way, she is known to enjoy the occasional boot-scoot!

Vanessa is a competent outdoor person with all the requisite qualifications to accompany guests into remote areas, she is easy going, talented and fun to be with. Catriona Rowntree from the Australian Holiday program Getaway was especially pleased to have Vanessa guiding her on a private expedition.

Angus was born and raised in Melbourne, Victoria. His family soon introduced him to the outdoors in the states’ High Country. Camping in the summer months and cross-country skiing in winter became an outlet from city life. A family holiday in India and Nepal when he was six gave an additional perspective on Australian living. In Scouts Angus learnt to lead others and develop bush skills, while his father, an architect, nurtured a passion for drawing. Throughout his teens Angus was XC-ski racing and taking his friends on adventurous trips by bicycle and on foot. After schooling he studied Agricultural Science giving him knowledge in the fields of forestry, resource management and farming. During the rainy Melbourne winters he worked in cafes and bars, saving to travel overseas. He trekked in the Nepal Himalaya twice, rode trains through India and Europe and overlanded into Tibet. The overseas journeys and hitchhiking sojourns around Australia were recorded through writing, sketching and painting. Over the years he also picked up guitar playing, harmonica and the didgeridu. Work experience on several farming enterprises lead to self-employment collecting native seed. Two summers near Broken Hill ensued, wild-harvesting wattle trees.

All along, his familys’ historical ties to Tasmania had been pulling him south. His grandmothers’ property in the states’ northern midlands had been a foothold on the island throughout childhood. It later served as a base for bushwalking in the southwest wilderness. In 1996 he organised for his Victorian friends and two sisters to complete five weeks of walking in this spectacular area.

Angus moved to Tasmania in 2001, renting an 1830’s convict-built cottage on the family farm ‘Woodhall’. Planting thirty acres under farm-forestry that year was a dream come true after the years at university. As summer approached he found guiding work for Cradle Mountain Huts/Bay of Fires Walk , where he first met Vanessa. Their friendship grew as the guiding season progressed and in May 2002 he moved to Dunalley to join the Holmes family enterprise of Potters Croft. It was here that he discovered the artistic and commercial potential of his watercolour landscape paintings. A course with renowned painter Max Angus unleashed new skills and a depth to his work.

Along with painting, Angus specialises in Botany, native foods and bushwalking. He loves living in the area and plans to put down permanent roots.