After travelling through New Zealand and Australia with Collette Tours, travel advisor Carol Nickell returns home with hard-won insights, a deeper compass, and a new appreciation for just how vast the world's most captivating southern destinations truly are.
At a Glance
Australia is far more vast and climatically diverse than most travellers expect, requiring significant walking to access its most beautiful areas. Visiting during shoulder season reduces crowds and wait times at iconic sites, while the friendly local population enhances the experience across the continent's varied landscapes.
There are trips that confirm what you already know, and there are trips that quietly dismantle your assumptions. For Carol Nickell, a seasoned travel advisor whose job is built on guiding others toward their best possible journey, a recent group tour through New Zealand and Australia with Collette Tours turned out to be very much the latter. What she expected was spectacular scenery and a well-organized itinerary. What she got was a geography lesson, a cultural immersion, and a professional recalibration she did not see coming.
Two Countries, Two Revelations
Nickell travelled as part of a group tour, a format that suited the scope of a dual-country itinerary spanning two of the Southern Hemisphere's most iconic destinations. From the moment she set foot in New Zealand, something familiar caught her eye. The rolling landscapes, the lush green valleys, the dramatic mountain backdrops. It all rang a bell. "The New Zealand landscape is similar to British Columbia," she noted, a comparison that will resonate with any Canadian traveller who has stood at the edge of a fjord or driven through the Coast Mountains. That sense of recognition made New Zealand feel immediately approachable, even welcoming, for North American clients who might otherwise hesitate at the distance.
Australia, however, offered no such comfortable parallels. The continent's sheer scale and climatic variety stopped Nickell in her tracks. "Australia has so many different climates," she observed, and that discovery came paired with an even more striking takeaway. "Australia is more vast than I thought." For a travel professional accustomed to mapping out logistics and setting client expectations, this was not a small admission. It was a recalibration of the mental model she had carried into the trip, and it is precisely the kind of insight that no guidebook or destination webinar can fully deliver.
The Warmth of the People, The Weight of the Miles
Beyond the landscapes, it was the human element that left the most lasting impression. Nickell speaks warmly about the "amazing sights and friendly people" she encountered throughout both countries, a combination that forms the emotional core of any truly memorable trip. There is a particular kind of travel magic that happens when a destination's natural beauty is matched by the openness of its people, and by her account, both New Zealand and Australia delivered on that front.
Yet Nickell is also refreshingly candid about the physical demands of the experience. Both countries, she is quick to point out, require a significant amount of walking to access their most beautiful areas. This is not a minor footnote. It is a practical reality that she now factors directly into how she advises clients. Travellers with mobility challenges, she explains, may not be able to get as much out of the trip as those who are more physically mobile. It is the kind of honest, experience-based guidance that distinguishes a trusted advisor from a simple booking agent.
Timing Is Everything
One of the clearest insider advantages Nickell brought home is a piece of advice that seasoned travellers often discover too late. "Travelling in the shoulder season is less busy and shorter lines," she points out, and in destinations as popular as New Zealand and Australia, that distinction can mean the difference between a transcendent experience and a frustrating one. Iconic sites that draw enormous crowds during peak months become far more accessible, and far more enjoyable, when visited just outside the main tourist windows. It is the kind of timing trick that most travellers would never figure out on their own, but that Nickell can now offer her clients with the full weight of personal experience behind it.
A Professional Toolkit, Expanded
The most lasting professional shift from this trip may be the simplest one. Nickell now understands, in a way she could not before boarding that first flight, how to navigate both countries. That navigational knowledge, earned through the rhythms of a group tour, through border crossings and climate shifts and long days on the road, gives her a practical fluency that will directly benefit every client she sends to this part of the world. She knows how the distances feel. She knows where the surprises hide. She knows what to prepare people for.
For Nickell, this is the true currency of a fam trip. Not the photographs or the itinerary checkboxes, but the lived understanding that makes recommendations credible and confidence contagious. When she tells a client that New Zealand will feel familiar and Australia will feel vast, she is speaking from the ground, not from a screen.
The Road Ahead
If the pace of Nickell's professional curiosity is any indication, New Zealand and Australia are simply the latest chapter in a much longer story. Her travel wish list reads like a masterclass in world exploration: Portugal and Spain, Italy and Greece, the British Isles, a Danube cruise, Colombia, and Peru. Each destination represents not just a personal adventure, but a future asset for the clients who rely on her expertise.
For Carol Nickell, the journey is always dual-purpose. Every stamp in her passport is a promise to the travellers who trust her with their dreams. And with the Southern Hemisphere now mapped more fully in her memory, she is already looking toward the next horizon.
