Spirit of the Rainforest Tour takes out two years in a row the Indigenous Category.
Left to Right: (Jason Salecich - Manager Cazalys Cairns and sponsor of the indigenous category, Sonya Jeffrey - Project Coordinator, Indigenous Tours and Programs, Caroline Grant - Senior Tour Guide, Tonya Grant - Trainee Tour Guide, Artist and Weave, Dr Ernie Grant - founder of Echo Creek and General Manager of Cultural and Education Programs.
If you had the opportunity to experience one of the best known indigenous education frameworks in Australia, then we would like to hear from you.
He has run workshops right across the state of Queensland (and indeed in every other state) on a Holistic Planning and Teaching
In July 2009 we invited our friend Jeff McMullen to assist us in promoting our tourism products.
Echo Creek Adventure Centre & Cultural Camp offers an eco-friendly, recreational camping, authentic indigenous, cultural and adventure experience.
Cultural activities include basket weaving, painting, mija (aboriginal hut) building and cultural, guided river and rainforest walks along with a range of adventure and nature based activities like canoeing, rafting and bushwalking. The man made lagoon also provides an area for recreational use.
The camp has 3 types of accommodation and a fully equipped camp kitchen and amenities blocks to suit any traveller.
Visit our Website for more details.
Ernie Grant is an elder of the Jirrbal people from the Tully area here in North Queensland. He spent his first nine years living in the rainforest getting a grounding in the traditional life of the North Queensland rainforest people.
Many academic researchers have been keen to draw on his knowledge in the fields of ethno-botany and spirituality/mythology. Uncle Ernie (as he is commonly known) has had a long and varied career, and a lifelong passion for education and for sharing his understandings with educators.
For many years, Ernie has been working as a Cultural Research Officer in the Queensland Department of Education. He presents at numerous state and national education workshops and conferences. He has extensive knowledge and experience working within traditional Aboriginal, urban and regional Aboriginal, and the wider non-aboriginal communities in Australia.
Very few Indigenous educators have the knowledge and experience of both traditional lore and western academic approaches to education. Ernie brings this to his work and that underpins his Holistic Teaching and Learning Framework. The key to understanding the holistic framework is the primary relationship that Aboriginal people have between their Land, their Language and their Culture. It is the inseperable nature of these elements and the ways they depend on each other for meaning for which Uncle Ernie has a uniqueness.
