Oceania Expeditions design exclusive curated adventures across the South Pacific tailored to your tastes and requirements. Through our bespoke approach, we create unique experiential travel experiences throughout Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and West Papua. Our specialty is bringing your dream trip to life. Let your imagination run wild!
We are passionate about providing our guests with truly transformative and life-affirming experiences. We achieve this through immersive cultural experiences, in-depth country knowledge and walking the fine line between raw adventure and refined luxury. When that balance is right, you will have memories for a lifetime, gathered over just a few days, on any one of our handcrafted itineraries.
We are very keen to promote communities and small businesses providing cultural experiences in beautiful and remote places. We aim to support sustainable tourism initiatives and endeavour to ensure benefits of tourism across the South Pacific are felt by local communities we work with. We additionally have a focus upon utilising suppliers with a keen sense of social and environmental responsibility.
Our business connections in the laidback and unpredictable South Pacific ensure the logistics are accounted for long before you arrive. We have spent years on the ground establishing relationships with landholders, hotels and tour providers. Our small team of experienced and local guides prioritise your safety and security, leaving fun and adventure as your only concern.
At Oceania Expeditions, our experience combines to deliver moments that enrich your understanding of the world and connect you to incredible bespoke experiences that you will recount to family and friends for many years to come.
Oceania Expeditions – PURE 2017 luxury travel award winner
Oceania Expeditions won the ‘Community Engagement’ Award for their Secluded Island Survivor experience at annual luxury travel industry’s night of nights, ‘Pure Life Experiences’, in Marrakesh, Morocco.
The award recognised OEX’s innovative partnership with local Karawara people in delivering a ‘survivor’ experience for travellers, in remote tropical PNG. The survivor experience is three days on an uninhabited island, with daily visits from the Karawara community to teach skills needed to survive. From spearfishing and foraging to weaving and networking, the experience is one of authenticity and sustainability and demonstrates to locals that ecotourism can be a viable alternative sustainable income source.
This transformational adventure is an opportunity to immerse oneself in a truly authentic traditional cultural experience with the Karawara peoples, leave the hectic pace of Western consumerism behind and have the opportunity to de-stress on an idyllic island home well away from the pressures of the modern world; a true tech detox.
Karawara community chairman, Corey Dotty Eron said the partnership offers cultural pride, income and pathways into the future.“Kabakon is a paradise of its own, my aim is to try as much as possible to look after my good clients and treat them the best,” Eron said. “Tourism is a new industry for us but we are committed to making it bigger and better with time. (It can) create job opportunities for our local people, assist our primary school, upgrade community-based aid posts and churches, empower our women and create many business spin offs.”
Meet the team
Nathan Batley
Co-Owner, Executive Director and Expedition Leader
Nathan Batley’s earliest memories from childhood are of Papua New Guinean village life. Raised in Samban village in the swampy grasslands of the lower East Sepik, Nathan spent his formative years swimming and fishing in the waterways, hunting frogs and dodging death adders with the local village kids. As a friendly and outgoing child whose fair hair and skin made him something of a novelty in the village of 800, Nathan would often leave home shortly after sun up and be out exploring most of the day, mum coming to find him around dusk in any number of houses with a plate of sago in his lap, trading stories in Pidgin and learning about traditional and contemporary village life.
As an adventurous and well-travelled adult, the bond Nathan has felt with PNG and the South Pacific has drawn him back to the region all his life. Nathan has worked as a leading Adviser for the Australian Government and as a Consultant to United Nations agencies and NGOs on youth related projects throughout the South Pacific. He is passionate about the preservation of culture and the handing down of customs from one generation to the next.
His fluency in Melanesian Pidgin (PNG and Solomon Islands) and Bislama (Vanuatu) facilitates candid, authentic and unparalleled access for clients to the lives of local people. Nathan is driven by the desire to show guests the absolute best this diverse region has to offer, and in doing so to support local tribes to celebrate and preserve their ancient traditions, endemic wildlife and pristine natural environments. His still happiest traipsing through the jungle, just like when he was a kid.
Lis Callanan
Co-Owner and Director Marketing and Business Development
Lis started her love affair with travel when she was six, traversing the USA with her parents and staying at the Waldorf Astoria. This passion has continued unabated. Lis has now notched up approximately 38 countries across 6 continents, living in eight of these. A culinary adventurer, Lis has eaten everything from fried tarantulas in Cambodia (with a dipping sauce!) to roasted guinea pig in Peru, but her current goal is to sample the best local gin in each region she visits!
The South Pacific has always enthralled Lis, with the diversity of languages, art and culture and yet fascinating and contrasting similarities that are shared between peoples due to the ancient seafaring expeditions that settled these islands many thousands of years ago. She especially loves the South Pacific for its diving and is happiest floating around in the underwater world with plenty of tropical fish to keep her company!
Lis started out working in the international humanitarian field which has seen her work with vulnerable children in Laos, providing education regarding cancer and palliative care in Samoa, and emergency and disaster response in PNG and Vanuatu. This community focussed ethos continues with Oceania Expeditions where she uses her sharp eye and attention to detail to ensure guests are treated to the most exceptional, authentic and ethical experiences available in the beautiful South Pacific, with the goal to support local suppliers and communities to benefit from the tourism economy in a sustainable and eco friendly ethos.
Ray Andrews
Senior Expedition Leader
Wildlife expert, Ray Andrews, is a gifted natural historian and communicator. A born nature lover, Ray’s passion is seeing people share in his delight of all the sounds, smells and sights in nature. Clouds, plants, animals and rocks become electrifying with Ray’s interesting and quirky commentary.
Ray has an Associate Diploma in Wilderness Reserves & Wildlife and a Degree in Tropical Plant Sciences. Even though he is a scientist, Ray can talk the talk that makes understanding and education easy. He was a passionate tree planter and whilst working for the Wet Tropics Tree planting Scheme was personally responsible for planting between 50,000 to 100,000 trees. Ray is fascinated by Papua New Guinea and Wallacea (the area in Indonesia where the marsupials meet the Placental mammals).
Ray has a thirst for knowledge that he wants to share. Anyone who travels with Ray cannot help but come away with a sense of wonder about what they have experienced and learned. Ray’s delivery is simple and straight to the point mixed with a sense of humour that makes time spent learning with him fun.
Raymond Numdi
Local Guide
Raymond Numdi has been working with Oceania Expeditions over the last 4 years. Raymond grew up as an orphan, but his talents were identified by the Catholic priests at the Orphanage and unlike most of his peers was selected to go through to the end of secondary school. Despite the church’s efforts, as a young man Raymond was drawn to the bright lights of being a musician, playing in a rock band touring the country. He has since guided for over 10 years in PNG before starting work for Oceania Expeditions. Raymond is based in Mt Hagen and regularly flies throughout PNG leading tours. Raymond’s skills are as a storyteller and he has a major interest in the 10,000 years of agriculture (one of 3 independent cradles of the world’s agriculture) his people have achieved and the history of witchcraft & sorcery in the Highlands Region. Raymond is married with 3 wives and when not guiding spends time working in his large gardens in Mount Hagen and Simbu.
Blake Everson
Expedition Leader
After graduating university with a degree in environmental literature, Blake Everson had big plans to be a world traveller. Sixteen years have since passed and Blake would choose Papua New Guinea as one of the highlights of his list of ‘must see’ destinations. The majesty of PNG’s myriad of rivers, mountains, volcanoes, caves, reefs, and rainforests are enough to capture the imagination of any traveller, but the 700+ cultures that call this environment home is what keeps the world map on his wall uncluttered by pins.
Growing up in Sonoma County, California, Blake’s earliest memories were exploring coastal tide pools and climbing oak trees. Fast-forward 20 years and find him having trekked through most of western North American wild lands from Mexico to the Yukon. Blake sees the idiom ‘road less traveled’ fundamentally flawed for it is the places where roads have never been that real adventure starts.
Blake has spent the past 11 years guiding filmmakers, researchers and adventure travellers to the remotest parts of Papua New Guinea. He and his wife Kate were married in a traditional wedding ceremony in a Southern Highlands village three months after they met in 2011. They have two young children and currently reside in Sun Valley, Idaho, USA.
