About Us
Making the World a Better Place For All of Us
About Cassowary Tours
Cassowary Tours is a local Far North Queensland company specialising in bird, wildlife and photographic tours. One of the oldest bird and wildlife business in Far North Queensland, our family business been operating for well over twenty years. We specialise in individual and small group bird and wildlife tours around one of the most exciting destinations in Australia. This area has the largest avifauna of any area in Australia with the Tablelands above Cairns alone having 15 endemic bird species while more can be found up Cape York and over to the west. In addition there is a huge variety of non avian animal species that can be seen, many of which can only be found in this area.
Originally based at Cassowary House in Kuranda we moved to a new larger property in February 2020. This includes a designated nature refuge with over a 100 acres of upland rainforest. We are busy cataloguing species and exploring and soon hope to be marking trails and setting up hides for photography of some of the great birds and wildlife we have around the place.
Now based at Topaz at the southern end of the Atherton Tablelands we offer a variety of guided day tours around the Cairns / Tablelands region.
We offer:
- Private tours for individuals, small groups and families available
- Binoculars can be provided if requested in advance
- Guides carry spotting scopes and have reference books in vehicle
- Complimentary water in vehicle
- Pickups from Cairns or the Tablelands
- Covid safe policy
Why choose us?
Local People
We are local people. We live and work in the area.
Local Knowledge
Small Group Tours
We believe that when it comes to wildlife and nature, small groups are less intrusive and allow for a much better experience.
Ethical Tourism
We believe in ethical birding, wildlife watching and photography. We put the welfare of the birds, and wildlife and their natural habitats first.
Our Ethical Birding, Wildlife watching & Photography code:
- The welfare of the birds and animals must always come first.
- We do not condone the modification of habitat to get a better view or photograph.
- We do not condone flushing a bird or animal to get a better view or photograph.
- We use playback calls responsibly and never continuously or at high volume.
- When spotlighting we encourage the use red light torches to avoid disturbing the birds and animals. Low beam white light torches are fine for use on the trail but not for shining at wildlife.
- We stay on roads, paths and trails wherever possible and where not possible we keep habitat disturbance to a minimum.
- We keep as far back from known roosting and nesting sites as possible.
- We do not intentionally break the law or ask others to do so to see or photograph a bird or animal.
We want future generations to be able to enjoy the things we show you now.
Meet the Guides
Phil Gregory
Jun Matsui
Phil Gregory
Director
Phil has been interested in birds since the demise of the steam trains when he was about 11. Born in Southampton, England he first came to Australia in 1977, but got side-tracked, and spent the next twenty years living and birding in Nigeria, Zambia, the Falkland Islands and Papua New Guinea.
He is a well-known tour leader, working for Field Guides Inc. and Sicklebill Safaris, and is one of Australia’s foremost birders. He is also one of the most experienced New Guinea guides with many tours led there ever since 1998.
His has recently published Birds of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Bougainville by Lynx Edicions, and is now working on a monograph on Birds of Paradise and Bowerbirds for Helm. He has also written species and family accounts for three volumes of the Handbook of the Birds of the World, and is involved as an advisor with the IOC and their World Checklist and Recommended English Names of Birds projects.
Special interests include field identification, vocalisations, taxonomy and bird distributions. He has been guiding occasionally since his African days, and became full time in 1998 when he side-stepped the joys of being an international school principal which he found was seriously impeding his birding. He now leads several tours a year in the Pacific Region, Asia and Africa.
Jun Matsui
Senior Guide
With a lifetime interest in wildlife in general Jun started bird guiding in 1993 when he worked as a volunteer ranger at the Hikarigaoka nature park in Tokyo, Japan. After working for the Japanese Environment Agency where he collected and managed data and at several reserves where he was involved in setting up environmental education projects and guiding as well as general management, he first arrived in Australia in 1999.
Spending a year traveling around and volunteering at various bird hotspots including Broome Bird Observatory he eventually took a job as a specialist bird tour guide for inbound Japanese groups, based in the tropical Far North Queensland town of Cairns. He has been involved in several bird publications and is the author of the very popular Japanese language field guide to the birds and wildlife of the Cairns/Atherton Tablelands area. Jun is an avid photographer and has won several awards for his pictures. In 2019 he provided the majority of the photographs for the New Holland publication A Field Guide to the Birds of Far North Queensland which was a joint collaboration with fellow Sicklebill guide Phil Gregory.
Jun is a very good all round naturalists and is interested in mammals, frogs, butterflies and other insects as well as birds. Jun is also a keen and talented photographer. He has won the Bird Portrait category in the Birdlife Photo Awards in both 20219 and 2020 with his photographs of Southern Cassowary.
He leads tours around Australia and overseas to New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and other Pacific destinations, to Japan, Indonesia as well as a number of other Asian countries.He joined the Sicklebill Safaris & Cassowary Tours team in 2007.