At Hidden Secrets, we are conscious of our impact on the environment around us, with a goal to tread lightly, always. Being a walking tour company, we soak up our environment as we walk, and we’re proud to tell our Melbourne’s stories through our storytelling too. This includes telling stories of Melbourne’s history, it’s innovation and it’s future, as it strives to be as liveable, and sustainable, a city as it can be.
Melbourne is home to 480 hectares of parks and gardens, with a commitment to continuing to grow green public spaces, and rooftops in central Melbourne total 880 hectares of space! This is why we’re excited by City of Melbourne projects like the Green Our Rooftop Project and Greening our Laneways.
And of course we sponsor our very own Rooftop Honey beehive atop Manchester House too, and you can read about Rooftop Honey and their work here.
We simply love the way architecture and green spaces can co-exist and thrive.
At the Southern Cross end of Collins Street you can also find the new Melbourne Quarter Sky Park by Lendlease, open to the public weekdays and offering an alternative perspective of the city, which you can check out here.
We’re also looking forward to seeing the development of the green public space around the W Hotel Melbourne on Flinders Lane (to open December 2020), creating another much needed green pocket in our city.
This World Environment Day we also want to highlight the impressive work of Echidna Walkabout and Koala Clancy. We strongly believe that the tourism industry has such an important role to play in championing progressive sustainability initiatives that both respect and support our natural environment.
Our friends at Echidna Walkabout are a social enterprise, and wonderful champion of wildlife tourism in Victoria and Australia. They are also the founders of the not for profit Koala Clancy Foundation, a registered charity which we were proud to support during the recent Australian bushfire season.
Koala Clancy has developed a Sustainable Koala Watching Code, and offers both locals and tourists the opportunity to give back through Koala Tree Planting Days in the You Yangs & Brisbane Ranges region, just outside of Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula. More on their tree planting days and how to get involved here.
If you’re planning to visit Melbourne during the Summer months (November to February), Echidna Walkabout’s Sunset Koala & Kangaroos Tour is a perfect addition to a morning tour with Hidden Secrets! A small group tour, it departs from Melbourne in the afternoon, allowing you to see kangaroos and koalas when most active in the late afternoon and at dusk. Our Laneways and Arcades followed by Koalas and Kangaroos sounds like a perfect day to us, as well as a perfect juxtaposition of what Victoria has to offer!
