Picture it. You’re strolling along a walking trail in one of Australia’s remote national parks, and a yellow-footed rock wallaby hops out in front of you.

Instead of consulting a tired and faded sign telling you a bit about the marsupial, you can open your phone and watch a video from a local Indigenous person even if you’re not in signal.

This is how Information Zone, a digital information service, works. Travellers can access 4K video, maps and other location-based information using a modem radio transmission.

Tony Coppins, who owns Kangaroo Island’s Visitor’s Information and the Adelaide Ocean Safari at Port Adelaide, bought the software in 2020 to diversify his tourism ventures during COVID-19.

“If you’re on a walking trail, traditionally there’d be a whole lot of signs telling you about animals and telling you about the Welcome to Country or giving you directions,” Coppins says.

“But now you just see a little a little logo and you can see that you are in zone and open your WIFI settings and Information Zone comes up.”

So far, the technology is only available across certain parts of Kangaroo Island and helps ease the burden of having physical guides on walking trails day and night.

Coppins says, “there’s nothing like this in the world”, and it would transform Australia’s tourism sector.

“I’ve travelled around the world, I’ve been out to 50 countries but I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says.

“That’s why I liked it so much and introduced it to my Visitor’s Information Centre on Kangaroo Island and I can see this going globally through information centres and national parks.”

Information Zone was one of 100 companies across South Australia featured as part of the First Nations Business Showcase last month at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

The showcase was hosted by The Circle, a First Nation’s entrepreneur hub based out of inner city start-up space Lot Fourteen.

The Circle’s operations manager Kelly May said the event allowed people to see how they can incorporate First Nations businesses into their operations.

“Engaging First Nations businesses to fulfil business needs is a practical way to demonstrate your commitment to South Australia’s First Nations community and reconciliation more broadly,” May said.

She said The Circle team provided advice on its tailored support offered to connect industry, government and non-government organisations with the First Nations business sector.

Lot Fourteen project lead Di Dixon said the showcase celebrates Australia’s first entrepreneurs.

“The level of innovation and ingenuity coming from this sector is impressive across industries like defence and legal consultancies, to marketing agencies and cosmetics companies,” Dixon said.

“Procuring services from South Australian businesses is about supporting our state and creating local jobs with social outcomes.”

Coppins says he sees Information Zone “transforming” cultural tourism and is already talking with local governments about picking it up.

The company won a scholarship from Adelaide-based start-up incubator Stone & Chalk in August and sees the platform being rolled out nationally in coming years.

“One great thing about this will be when it goes to market and when it goes to local governments and they pick it up and start to use it in their playgrounds, caravan parks, campsites, walking trails – someone’s got to make the content,” Coppins says.

“It’s simple content to make, but we can see Aboriginal children being taught how to do video and audio editing and putting this together.

“It’s going to be a game changer.”

Employing First Nations peoples was always the goal for David Mallett when setting up his Indigenous-owned project management business Yanun Project Services.

Mallett said prospective clients would always quiz him on how many Indigenous staff he employed.

“At the time, it was only me because professional project managers of First Nation’s descent are as rare as hen’s teeth,” Mallett said.

“It sort of got me thinking that it was certainly something I wanted to improve but I wasn’t sure how to approach it.”

Yanun managing director David Mallett

Mallett spun the question around to his clients and asked if they’d be willing to help train First Nations people to lighten the workload.

“We were looking at really smart Aboriginal men and women coming out of school, not necessarily wanting to jump straight into a university degree, which for Aboriginal people can sometimes be a bit of a bridge too far,” he said.

“So, I sort of put the pathway out there and started talking to some of them about what a career in this space looks like, and that you can actually learn a lot of what we do on the job.”

These discussions kickstarted a career pathway program within Mallett’s company that allows First Nations people to work full-time while gaining a Certificate IV in project management.

Also based at Lot Fourteen, the company now has a team of eight people, including several First Nations trainees, and is scoring work with major defence suppliers.

“We need to be represented at a professional level and it needs to evolve from cultural heritage training and environmental cultural clearances, and all those sorts of roles and services that Aboriginal businesses get pigeonholed into, to a more business perspective,” Mallett said.

“I guess we’re trying to break the mould and say, there’s other things we can do.”

Mallett said the future is looking bright for Yanun, with plans to open an office in Sydney next year to take advantage of a large amount of defence work in the eastern states.

“We really want to continue to grow our team and expand our training programme. So, as our team grows, we’re able to support more partnerships as well, and that goes hand in hand,” he said.

“We’d like to obviously continue to expand our footprint into the defence market, so when organisations start to look at tendering big defence programmes, we want to be front of mind for the services that we can bring.”