FORMER Heygo travel guide Lynne Schroeder is set to take a real-life ‘Trek Across The World’ – a mammoth 25,000-mile journey spanning three continents – streaming online tours along the way.

The 65-year-old and her husband Richard will leave Australian home city Sydney in January and spend up to a year on the road, making their way up through South-East Asia and then on to mainland Europe.

After a few days in Singapore, they will spend some 10 weeks in Malaysia before heading to Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, better known in the West as Saigon, and head north on the Reunification Express.

The Reunification Express

The 1,072-mile railway connects the capital to Hanoi, and was named to mark the reunion of North and South after the terrible conflict that raged for 20 years, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.

It is a travel trek that Lynne and Richard, also 65, have dreamed of making ever since the pandemic lockdown that left them confined to a 5km radius of their two-bedroomed home near Sydney Olympic Park.

“Lockdown in Sydney was pretty challenging,” says Lynne. “We’d travelled extensively before. In 1987, we left Australia with a backpack and a 12-month round-the-world ticket – and returned five years later.

“When coronavirus shut everywhere down, we found ourselves working from home in our second bedroom. At least we had e-bikes and we were able to get out for an hour a day within a 5km radius.”

It was during the pandemic that Lynne first chanced upon live travel streamer Heygo, which started up in 2020 but sadly closed down in April this year. The online tours led by local guides were a godsend.

The former sales and web development specialist joined Heygo as a virtual voyager – part of the Facebook community of site users – in May 2021 and reckoned she might be able to lead tours herself. 

“It was as lockdown eased that I would practice creating content around the parklands near to our home,” says Lynne. “I had never led tours before but, after much beating on the door, I was finally accepted as a Heygo guide in December that year.”

Her first tour was showing Heygo Voyagers the shipwrecks in Homebush Bay, on the south bank of the Parramatta River, in the west of Sydney – a former shipwreck yard back in the 1960s and 70s.

Shipwreck in Homebush Bay

Old ships used to be transported to the yard to be decommissioned, but gradually the facility fell by the wayside, in the end leaving Mother Nature to cloak the wrecks in floating forests of green.

Read more: Closure of Heygo ‘incredibly sad’ says founder

Like most of the other live stream guides, she was shocked by the collapse of Heygo and was effectively given two weeks notice of the site’s complete closure.

Lynne and pal at her Hawkesbury River house-sit

“When the announcement came, I had just returned from an exhausting three-week journey,” she recalls. “Travelling through the regional small towns of New South Wales and Queensland, I’d delivered 23 Heygo tours during that time.

“I was about to move into my first-ever house-sit, and had ambitious plans to do a series of tours in response to the recently launched Heygo Food Academy, which had garnered a great deal of interest.

Australia’s famous ANZAC biscuits

“I still went ahead with a number of ‘Challenge Accepted’ tours with a twist. You may recall Adry’s Empanadas, Stephan’s Stampot, Sayuri’s Mocqueca, and Alex’s ANZAC Biscuits!

“As a tribute to Vanessa’s Guinea Pig, a traditional endemic food, I cooked kangaroo using her recipe. And the twist? The common thread through all of the dishes was the inclusion of Vegemite!”

Lynne admits it might have seemed odd at first, but explains she used Vegemite simply as a flavour enhancer – and she did a prequel stream  to show ways to use it, comparing it to other umami foods.

“The word of the day following Heygo’s demise was ‘pivot’,” she says. “Guides and voyagers alike scrambled to figure out what might come next. As groups formed, mainly on Facebook, guides dealt with the upheaval according their own personal confidence and expertise.

Lynne with fellow Heygo guide Matt Urmenyhazi

“While some had experience with other virtual touring sites, others were comfortable using Zoom. Determined not to let the sudden turn of events slow me down, I jumped into Facebook Live in an effort to continue delivering live content and help keep the community connected.

“Facebook Live worked well for a while but had its limitations so once again I pivoted, this time turning to YouTube which offered more in terms of reliability and more user-friendly features, especially via one of the many streaming apps which seemed to offer more stability.”

Now still delivering live tours – pictures from which appear above – and part of the Together Virtually – Discover The World community, Lynne has recently relocated to a new house-sit, and volunteered at the local koala hospital.

This week she’s in the process of moving base yet again after a frustrating period without immediately available wi-fi – and then the great adventure beckons. “We’re looking at a year of travel,” she says.

Ho Chi Minh City

“The first leg will see us covering some 5,000 miles in South-East Asia,” she reveals. “It’ll actually be a lot more than that with the side trips we want to make, but that’s the major route.

“After riding the Reunification Express, we’ll travel on into Thailand and Laos before then flying from Ho Chi Minh City to Frankfurt, where the next chapter will begin. 

Richard and Lynne with former Heygo Scottish guide Whisky

“We’ll head to Köln for a week or so – Richard has extended family there, and we spent three weeks there over Christmas 2017 – then we’re heading to Spain and Portugal.

“We have chosen countries based on their lower cost of living since we are retired but not yet of pension age,  and living in Sydney is ridiculously expensive.”

Lynne and Heygoers adopted a koala

Along the way, Lynne will be live streaming and filming tours, and hopes to meet up with fellow guides if it proves possible.

She has always been keen to promote their work and charitable causes, recently sharing Motor Neurone Disease fundraising with Egypt’s Lesley Hammam.

Lesley Hammam in Egypt

Read more: How a terrifying accident led to Egyptian adventure

“I have an unwavering belief that when we support each other, we all benefit,” she says. “I’ve reached out to a number of guides in the countries I’ll be visiting as a courtesy to them, and an acknowledgement that I will be, after all, a guest in their locations.”

Lynne plans to share her travels with both live virtual voyagers and  recorded content, with temples, gardens, birdlife, waterfalls, food experiences and much more on her tick-list.

One of Lynne’s Heygo tour reviews

The couple’s adventure will be followed, too, by her elderly parents  back home. “They used to love watching my Heygo tours,” Lynne says. “They find it harder to watch me now on YouTube but my brother will give them a hand!

“My four adult children are also all in Sydney, so the content we create will help them stay connected as we travel.”

Many former Heygo guides have joined the Together Virtually – Discover The World collective, which is continuing to run live-streamed interactive tours, and which is set to launch a new website soon.

Read more: More former Heygo big-hitters join new guides group

Catch up with Lynne’s travels via Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and the Together Virtually – Discover The World community.