MEDIA RELEASE
For immediate release

One man’s fight to ‘Close The Gap’ in Central Australia

Alice Springs — XX April 2011 — After working as a tour guide for 15 years in Central Australia, Richard Ramsden, or Reg as he prefers to be called, dreamt of being able to use tourism to do more to support remote indigenous communities.

This led Reg to establish Remote Tours – an accredited company operating out of Alice Springs that specialises in informative, cultural and educational tours for student groups.

“I started Remote Tours five years ago in order to give students from Australia and around the world the chance to visit the Red Centre and learn directly from Indigenous elders about traditional Aboriginal culture,” Reg said.

Reg’s tours introduce students to the Lilla community as well as two neighbouring communities that are nestled in the Watarrka National Park (Kings Canyon) – a place rich with ancient Aboriginal knowledge and history.

The tours contain a community service component which is making a real difference to the local Aboriginal communities. School and university students from around the globe and Australia have helped to rebuild a local school that reopened in January after being closed for over 12 years. The school has 19 local Aboriginal children enrolled, and is staffed by two teachers Wilma and Neville Lambert from Lambert School in Tasmania who incredibly fly on a rotation roster with their son in order to keep the school running. Reg is currently working to get a temporary kitchen onsite in order to give the kids a nutritional breakfast and lunch.

“It took a lot of work to re-open the school. I had a bit of help from the Education Department. Without the school, those 19 students would still be without an education” Reg said. The student tour groups have also helped to build a market garden and assist in cleaning up the local communities, however Reg says the students in the tour groups benefit as much as the Aboriginal communities.

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“Seeing the change the student groups go through whilst on tour just blows me away every time,” says Reg. “They arrive in central Australia, with one kid better at sport, another a facebook queen, another a maths expert. They leave more as equals, all with a better understanding of nature, Aboriginal culture and a greater sense of well-being.”

Reg also funnels 10 percent of all profits into the Yummo Foundation – an initiative he set up to provide local Aboriginal children with nutritious meals. The Foundation also pays for an annual community tour to a place in Australia that they have never been to.

“The last trip, I took the community to see the ocean for the first time in their lives. It was great to see their faces light up,” Reg said.

Reg’s friend and supporter Jim Greer said: “I first met Reg not long after arriving in Alice Springs six months ago. I was approached by Reg to redesign his Remote Tours website and while doing so, I realised there was a lot more I could do to help. This press release is part of that help. A thing most people don’t know is that Reg is also illiterate making running a tour company 10 times harder than normal. It also makes what Reg has achieved all the more remarkable.

‘I’d love to see more people out there doing what Reg does. It’s an inspiration for everybody.’

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For more information contact:
Jim Greer - 0458 592 089
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Reg Ramsden – 0417 088 939
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43 Spicers Crescent
Alice Springs NT 0870
Australia
PH: (08) 8953 7012

Note to editors: This story is both heartfelt and encouraging. Remote Tours would love to have this story televised and would happily take anyone wishing to cover the story out to Lilla Community or even on tour to see and understand what the story is truly about first-hand.

For more information on Remote Tours or to donate to Reg’s Yummo Foundation visit:
www.remote-tours.com