About Us

Welcome to Nature Trail.

Nature Trail is a small completely independent tour operator based in the country town of Katoomba, 100km west of the Sydney CBD situated in the heart of our magnificent Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

In 2025, Tour Director Steve decided to convert the Blue Mountains based tour business Nature Trail into a nonprofit organisation. We were never about profit making from the outset anyway, but rather about sharing our insights of the Blue Mountains where we live and getting out and about and away from our otherwise webdesign work. We don’t employ staff and we don’t accept donations.

We are about getting back to Nature in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

Katoomba is ideally located at the epicentre of dozens of hiking trails into the surrounding wilderness, and accessible to the Western Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands.

Nature Trail offers premier tours throughout the Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands focusing on day hiking tours exploring magnificent scenic lookouts, lush ancient rainforests. We also extend to wilderness experiences, nature workshops, soft grade 4×4 tours, as well as a select range of country road touring beyond.

For the advanced self-sufficient hiker we design and lead bespoke 2-Day Treks and Multi-Day Treks throughout the many national parks and nature reserves of this wild world heritage listed region and beyond.

Steve, our Tour Director, founded Nature Trail back on 13th December 2013 and launched the first recced and practice trips at Nature Trail Base in Katoomba on 23rd August 2017.

Nature Trail’s tour operation represents a consolidation of more than 20 years of exploring the Australian continent including independent wunderlust, hiking, road touring, nature photography, a career in hospitality, tourism and tour guiding and even environmental activism.

Nature Trail in 2018 commercially launched as a startup tour operator optimistically after five years of preparation – education, qualifications, training and operational design.

We finally launched Nature Trail’s commercial tour operation in December 2019.

Yet despite our extensive due diligence, unexpectedly we subsequently copped NSW Government lockdowns (bushfire/pandemic), thereafter its increasing costly read tape and the grant extortion imposts.

So, we have reflected on all this political intimidation undermining our tour initiative and viability. Under such unviable imposition, as from July 2025 Nature Trail has decided for the time being to operate as a not-for-profit tour operation venture.

In this strategic way, we’ve become non-commercial, reject any revenue, and healthily free ourselves of governmental authoritarian imposts, red tape, compliance regulations, certifications (although we have them), costly and extortionate fees, taxes. So we have relief from all the stress that comes out of the government bubble. Nature Trail rather has always been about just sharing our insight about habitat, and never about revenue, profit motives nor needless compliance, nor governmental bureaucratic over-reach.

Thus, all our tours are currently free and we liken this to a karma of Nature. Nature Trail has become an Emeritus Tour Operator. It’s because we just like what we do and we’ve at no time ever sought profit, just breakeven so to pay governmental red tape.

Effectively we’ve beaten the government and even the cheap and nasty unqualified bushwalking clubs at their own game, since we are now even more independent of costs and rules. We are not a registered club or association. We charge no fees, so we are not beholden to anyione but our fee-free guests, whom we deem as ‘friends out on a hike’. So put that up your jumper regulators!

We’ve successfully turned a negative into a positive. It is a principle that well suits the craft of touring. Sometimes when out in in the field things happen, but its the how one deals with the scenario that makes for a safe and rewarding experience.

We’ve otherwise sadly noted many a fellow competitor since go broke or wind up under the NSW government’s tourism compliance red tape regime.

Thanks again for visiting our website. We flourish.