Welcome to Tread Gently

Welcome to Tread Gently,

Tread Gently is the world's first Blog, yes that's right the very first one ever!!! it is also the worlds first Internet Based Travel Documentary. Conceived and created By myself, Eric Roberts, with the help of my former wife, Sarah, in 1996. The web was in its infancy and the idea of wondering around the bush with a satellite phone and a laptop computer was totally outlandish.

There were few programs to help with writing the pages and I was dismayed to discover that I had to teach myself the various computer languages to pull the pages together, but i did it, and over a period of three months we travelled to some of the most remote parts of Australia and documented it all on the web for your enjoyment. the site was originally hosted on www.earlybird.com.au then for a while on www.treadgently.com. for various reasons, it went offline for a year, but it pained me to think that this wonderful piece of internet history was not available to everyone to enjoy, so here is our story! At the time, while we were travelling, we were the 3rd most popular site in the world, many thousands of people were following our trip, we received more emails than we knew what to do with, it was a wonderful and exciting undertaking and we hope that you will also enjoy it as well!

"It was in 1996 that we first headed off on our big adventure around Australia. It was a fun and challenging trip. We started out as fairly green city-slickers and found that as we travelled further and further from civilisation we began to shed many of the notions that we had held dear for most of our lives. By the time we finished our wonderings to settle in the hinterlands of Byron Bay we were completely transformed.

To honour this process of transformation and the historical nature of this site, I have maintained Tread Gently in its original state and hope that this will give you an insight into the state of the internet at the time and the things that we experienced.

I also hope that you will continue to use it, the way others have in the past, to ask questions about specific places, to comment about our insights, or to share your own experiences etc. I truly appreciate all the feedback that I have had over the years and I look forward to hearing from you in the future...so have a look around and get in contact if you feel like it..."

This site represents people, businesses, and places in terms of how they appeared to us at the time and should not be considered indicative of how they may be now.

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Tread Gently

..with your hosts Eric and Sarah as they journey across the ancient and vast continent of Australia. A land of adventure...the last frontier.

Travel through this spectacular country visiting the lush rainforests of north Queensland, the teeming waters of the Great Barrier reef, the arid deserts of central Australia, and the rugged remoteness of the Kimberley. Perhaps like many other people out there, you don't have the time to drive across a country like Australia, to explore wild National Parks and rugged coastlines, camp out under the stars, go fishing for Barramundi, or frolic with kangaroos.......well we did have the time, in fact we made the time especially for you!

While we were on the road we downloaded, via Satellite direct to our web site - (what an amazing high tech world we live in!), photos and interesting things encountered, coupled with our personal insights on each place visited.

YOU! are an integral part of this adventure. We want an opportunity to exchange information and ideas with you. So don't be shy, and make sure you get to our Contact Us page and lets us know what you think.

Questions, comments, scorn or praise....contact us on the road. Not only do we want you to participate in our journey, we also want to know what you think.
We in return, will do our very best to answer your various, numerous, diverse and no doubt interesting questions!
Our goal, above all, is to establish a fun, informative and compelling site, based on the experiences of exploration, action, and interaction.
There is a down to earth and gently trodden human element to our whole journey...It will be real, random, revealing, and reflective. In essence............................... recommended & required viewing (at least we're hoping so!)

...(gif 93k). Click on this icon to see a map of our route. It is always changing but we'll try to keep it as up to date as we can

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An ever exciting and challenging road awaits!

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