Meet the Mob

Our story

In 1999, Red Spaces was given permission to operate at Uluru.

About a decade ago, when Uluru Aboriginal Tours closed its doors, senior Anangu Elders came to Leroy Beachley (Director) and Jen and asked whether Red Spaces would take on their contracts. The Elders didn't want to leave loyal clients without a product, and they didn't want to see it fall over again. So they said yes.

They changed how the tours ran. They put the fun and the engagement back into them, so that guiding felt like something the guides wanted to do rather than a rostered shift. Guests noticed. Numbers picked up. Before long other tour companies were asking for Red Spaces guides, and today we work with operators from around the world.

Since 1999, Red Spaces has provided training, work and income for more than fifty Anangu — hundreds of thousands of dollars that has gone straight back into community. Today we have eleven Anangu who guide with us regularly and rely on that income, and on the sense of purpose that comes with it.

Our mission

Real income. Not charity.

That's the whole thing, and everything else follows from it. We want the world to see how extraordinary Anangu culture is, and we want the people sharing it to be rewarded for the privilege of showing it to you.

Working alongside the community, we navigate the younger generations into guiding and into the tourism industry.

The people behind Red Spaces

Leroy Beachley — Director

Leroy has guided in the outback for more than thirty years. He has the language skills to translate for Anangu. He's been initiated within the community and is family to many Anangu here.

Leroy has trained every guide on our team to an expert level, and he keeps expanding that work through the community. He'll bring a group of people out on one tour and pay them all training wages, even on the days he makes nothing himself. He's aided in giving homes, fed people and handed over warm clothes when they were needed. That's not a side project for him — it's how he's spent his life out here looking after family.

Jen has worked alongside Leroy in the business from the beginning, and still does. Between them they've made more inroads across Central Australia and befriended more Anangu families than anyone else operating in this region.

Cameron Szalc — Partner

Cameron met Leroy during a research trip into the region.

What he found was a mission that had been quietly running for twenty years and been overlooked — and a gap in the market nobody had filled. Cameron already ran Australian Private Tours, a luxury private touring business he started at twenty-three and built out across every major region in Australia, spending seven years on the road putting together the best network of guides and operators in the country. He brought those skills to Red Spaces.

Since then he's worked with Leroy and Jen to turn what was largely a labour of love into a proper business — one that can grow, hire and train more Anangu, invest in vehicles, and put real financial training behind its guides. He continues to promote and push cultural tourism in the region, so that the locals see more of the benefit and guests get the real thing rather than a version of it.

He loves what Red Spaces provides and has a similar mission to Jen and I — to show the world how amazing Anangu culture is, while providing real income, not charity. Leroy's words

More than a job

We don't stop at the day's wage.

We help our guides set up ABNs. We sit down with them on budgeting, banking and saving. We provide no-interest loans when they're needed — for food, for tyres, for power cards, for bus tickets. Practical things, at the moment they matter.

We're also building a one-year training-to-employment pathway with the community at Mutitjulu: cultural tourism awareness, accreditation, and the skills that go with holding down a job — through to full-time work in guiding, driving, operations and hosting. Our aim is that this becomes a proper gateway into the industry, not a one-off program.

Anangu ownership

Red Spaces is committed to always keeping 50% of shares available for Anangu ownership.

Leroy and Cameron have both agreed to it. We've said from the beginning that we're caretakers here. The happiest day will be handing the office keys to one of our own Anangu guides — and it will happen.

Our guides

Every guide on our team is Aboriginal, has lived or been trained by local Anangu.

To walk this land with Anangu is a different thing entirely. It brings home the truth and the wonder of the rock as it's experienced by the people who have been walking around it the longest and know it the best.