Hi! My name is John Feeney and I want to welcome you to The Hiking Society and share with you a little bit about who we are and what we’re about.

As you may have already read, the Hiking Society exists to make it easier for you to explore the outdoors. This could be anything to do with trail information, gear, reviews, food, maps etc.

My goal is to get you into the outdoors and ensure that you can have the best time possible.

Originally founded and launched as a blog in July 2016, the Hiking Society quickly evolved into a hiking Meetup group in Victoria that September. Myself and my 25 other organisers would regularly lead weekend hikes whether they be day or overnight hikes. When it was all said and done in December 2018, our group had grown to some 5,000 people which meant we were the fastest growing outdoor MeetUp group in Victoria at the time.

By December 2018, I decided to evolve The Hiking Society once more and become an adventure company running day hikes and overnight hikes in places such as The Grampians, the Victorian High Country, Wilsons Prom, the Dandenongs, and more.

Once again, we aimed to make it as easy as possible for our adventurers to go hiking or camping by providing all the equipment, transport, food and know-how. All they had to do was turn up and enjoy themselves.

Unfortunately, COVID-19, like it did to many others, put a stop to our adventure company and I made the difficult decision to not continue with it. The business itself was doing well but COVID certainly took its toll in so many ways that I felt like I need to a fresh start and look to other challenges beyond the tourism.