GLOBETROTTING tour guide Lynne Schroeder remembers all too well the day that travel streamer Heygo collapsed – she was between homes and had just returned from an extensive Australian road trip.

“We had sold our house and we were effectively homeless,” says the sixtysomething guide, who is based in Sydney. “Our plan was to build a granny flat in our daughter’s backyard but work hadn’t started yet – and as she was renovating her own house, she’d ripped out the bathroom!

“We were living in a building site awaiting the construction of our own place. Luckily, it was summer and we could make use of the changing rooms and showers at the local, and very beautiful, ocean pools in Newcastle.

“We had just returned from a three-week-long road trip that covered more than 2,000 kilometres through regional New South Wales into South East Queensland, and I’d live-streamed much of the journey for Heygo, so to hear it was closing was a shock.”

Like many of us, Lynne had first discovered the travel streaming platform during Covid lockdown, when real travel became no longer an option. She built a following on Heygo, only to see it close on April 11 last year after becoming financially unviable.

Despite the uncertainty that followed, however, there was no stopping Lynne. There ensued eight months of house-sitting, first in Brooklyn, overlooking the Hawkesbury River on the northern outskirts of Sydney, and then in Nelson Bay, an hour further north.

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

“I was about to do a Vegemite tasting tour when we found that Heygo was closing down,” Lynne says. “I remember commiserating with my voyagers – it was all so difficult to grasp. The next days were a flurry of activity as I guiltily abused the homeowners’ wi-fi and madly downloaded all but two of my Heygo recordings.

“And then we all scrambled, guides and voyagers alike. Dazed and confused, but determined to carry on, we all explored what worked for us. I started with Facebook Live and others started with YouTube. We all had vastly different experiences and limitations.

Lynne in Melaka, on her current trek

“Some guides had well-established communities and followings; others didn’t. Voyagers assessed and critiqued the platforms guides used and the quality and features of each. With a community as large and diverse as ours, there was a great deal of input. But one thing everyone agreed on: we all wanted to carry on.”

Read more: Trace the Heygo story in my Virtual Travel archive

Out of the ashes, two groups arose. One was a guides’ collective working on a way forward to continue where Heygo had left off, and which last year launched the Together Virtually website, supported by the Together Virtually – Discover The World Facebook community. 

The other was Going Places Virtually, a group created by virtual voyager Bev Irish-Zielinski, sharing details of livestream tours offered on various platforms and pulling together the online locations of as many guides as possible.

Lynne is one of the leading lights in the latter group, which she describes as “your quintessential grassroots community, born out of a passion to save something special”. To help grow the audience for virtual travel, the Australian guide has since created and launched the Livestream Events website and Youtube channel.

Now, Lynne works closely with Bev and California guide Annette Goes – another former Heygo regular – to keep voyagers up to date with new tours currently offered on various platforms by more than 40 guides, many of them familiar from the Heygo era.

But the love of travel lies at the heart of everything Lynne does.

Currently taking a year out on a ‘slow travel’ trek through South-East Asia and then on to Europe, during which she is presenting live-streamed tours, she believes that online trips are as important now as they were in the dark days of Covid.

“My husband and I left Australia on January 10 for a year of slow travel,” says Lynne. “We spent 10 weeks in Malaysia and we are now in Vietnam until early June. From there we will travel to Thailand, Laos, and then on to Europe.

“During this time I will attempt to meet up with as many of my former Heygo colleagues and voyagers as I can – I’ve already had the pleasure of spending time with Alvin in Singapore and Huy in Hoi An, and I have made contact with both Le Hoang and Trong Cong in Hanoi.”

Read more: Former Heygo guide plans 25,000-mile trek across three continents

She has a final, heartfelt message, to all those in the virtual touring community whatever platform they may use to access live-streamed travel.

“We know that virtual touring is valued by people who live alone,” she says. “For them it offers a way to connect with other people and is often an important weapon against loneliness. We know it is popular with people who once loved to travel but for whatever reason can no longer do so.

“We know that virtual classes such as cooking or meditation, forest bathing or reiki, or get-togethers such as music nights are enjoyed enormously by many people – or it could just be a way of having a watch party with a friend. Without the support of our voyager community, our guides would not be able to do this.”

Images from Lynne’s epic trek courtesy Lynne Schroeder.

NEED TO KNOW

Lynne’s Livestream Events site, backed by a dedicated Youtube channel, works hand-in-hand with the Going Places Virtually Facebook group.

Together Virtually runs the Together Virtually website and Youtube channel, and has a dedicated Together Virtually – Discover The World Facebook community.

Other former Heygo guides offer tours both through their own social media channels and via the Virtual Travel and Tours Facebook group.

Together, the various groups of guides and voyagers are keeping the virtual travel torch burning a year after Heygo’s closure. Thank you one and all.

Read more: A year after Heygo collapse, where next for virtual travellers?