About Us

Matthew Newton is a diehard birder and cofounder of Leatherback Travel, the group behind Avienne along with Patch Adventures, Camino Women, and several other in-house brands.

While Matthew hasn't been a birder for very long, he considers himself well and truly 'bit'. So much so that as a beginner, Matthew logged over 500 lifers within 6 months of picking up his first set of binoculars. Now, he has submitted Ebird checklists from four different continents (Asia, North America, Europe and Australia.)

Travel shaped most of his life. His parents took him across most continents when he was young, and in his solo-traveller days he once booked a same-day flight on a whim, driving himself to the airport for a last-minute flight to Indonesia because he felt like it.

These days he splits his time between Leatherback's brands, meeting ground partners in person. He still believes travel can shift how someone sees a place, and birdwatching might be the clearest version of that: it asks you to stop, look properly, and notice what was there all along.

Nic is an ecologist by training. She studied ecosystems and the species that live in them, wrote the academic papers to prove it, and spent her early working years coordinating conservation expeditions for volunteers who had never done anything like it before.

The placement that stuck with her was in Bolivia. Nic spent three months on the Moxos plains of the Beni, in the country's hot northern lowlands, on a project to conserve the blue-throated macaw. At the time there were thought to be around 200 left in the wild, and the work was mostly to watch: long days with binoculars glued to her eyes, noting every small thing the birds did, so the team could understand enough to protect them. She still considers it one of life's highlights.

Originally from the UK, she has been traveling for more than twenty years, across six continents and some forty+ countries, much of it solo. She now lives in Melbourne, in a suburb where the parrots are louder than the traffic, which suits her fine.

Nic joined Leatherback Travel in 2023 and now leads the team that launches its newest brands. Avienne is the one closest to home: a brand built on the idea that nobody should have to prove their credentials to spend a day with the birds.