About Us 
Heidi Yates – Director
Heidi left the UK 19 years ago after completing a BSc Degree in Psychology. She spent the next 10 years travelling and working around the world. Travel, adventure, diving and photography are her passions! She worked in the Philippines as a gold bullion trader for 2 years and for a skydiving, diving and parasailing company in Key West, Florida, USA for 2 years. She has travelled extensively including the South Pacific – Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Malaysia, Borneo, Canada and South Africa.
She finally settled in Australia after meeting her Husband, Marty 10 years ago, and has worked in the tourism industry in Cairns ever since. She has worked on tour desks, on reef boats as a photographer (Ocean Spirit Cruises), in Sales and Marketing (Mike Ball Dive Expeditions), and as a Training and Development Manager - training staff how to sell travel, so has a broad knowledge of the tourism industry.
Heidi and Marty have run Visit Cairns for over 5 years, in addition to running their Drive In movie theatre at Mareeba - 1 of only 11 drive in movie theatres left in Australia.
She is very passionate about the area and the tourism industry. She provides 5 star service and specialises in creating personalised itineraries for her clients, meeting their exact needs, ensuring they get the very best experience in the area.
Both are very passionate about the reef and the rainforest and spend every spare moment either in the rainforest or underwater exploring new and exciting reef locations! Their 4 year old daughter shares the same passion and has snorkled the reef (complete with mask, snorkel and fins) at 3 years of age!
Heidi and Marty have a great passion for adventure sports and have skydived, parasailed, quad biked, bungy jumped, white water rafted…. Pretty much all and everything the area has to offer……so speak from great experience!
Heidi has also spent 3 days in a shark cage on a 3 day 2 night Great White Shark Expedition in South Australia (see ‘Rest Of Australia’ section and ‘diving Expeditions’ for more info) which has to be one of her most amazing experiences in her whole life – being in the water face to face with over 10 fully grown great white sharks over 3 days. She still gets tingles talking about it 5 years later!
Marty Yates – Director
Marty has worked in tourism for 17 years in Sydney, the Whitsundays and in Cairns, working on boats, in reservations, managing travel desks, and in operations.
Marty like Heidi loves the great outdoors – he is a passionate diver and a white water and sea Kayaker. Together they know the area like the back of their hands and can provide a long list of fantastic areas to explore, whether you be a diver, snorkler, hiker, camper, kayaker, four wheel driver or fisher.
They are both very familiar with the East Coast of Australia having both booked east coast packages for over 10 years. They are also familiar with Kakadu, Katherine Gorge, Uluru and Western Australia. So no itinerary is too tricky for them!
One thing is for sure – they have great pride in the area they live and want to ensure each and every one of their clients leaves the area with the same enthusiasm they have, having had the best possible experience in the tropics!
