Index

Perhaps you'd like to meet our colleagues, the faces of other HomeLink Organisers around the world? Just click on the links to the left.

HomeLink Australia was established in 1980, providing a way for us to explore our amazing country and connect with our families, friends and fellow Australians interstate. As part of the world's oldest and largest home exchange network, membership also meant that once in a lifetime trips abroad became simply a matter of choosing when to go.

Our HomeLink community is composed of people from all over the world, with diverse backgrounds, ages and life experiences. Yet we are all similar, connected by our sense of adventure, our love of life and pleasure from authentic experiences.

Our origins - the birth of HomeLink International Associates - 1953

HomeLink International has a particularly exciting history. We started over 50 years ago, from a collaboration of two separate networks of friends in two different continents which had each set up a formal club for home exchange. Within a few years, both groups came to hear about each other. Excited that there were like-minded people, they quickly joined their efforts and became one, expanding their travel and friendship possibilities across Europe and North America, and creating what we now know as HomeLink International.

The two groups' founders, David Ostroff, a New York teacher and Jan Ryder, wife of an RAF officer in the UK, established their networks to ensure cheap travel and to facilitate understanding of peoples around the world. Their cultural sensitivity and focus on friendships are values that remain central to our community.

Until recently, most people's awareness of HomeLink International and home exchange was passed through word of mouth. This makes the community all the more remarkable, with now over 60 countries with members.

[ For a more detailed account of how we started, click here ]

An idea whose time has come

Today, two significant factors are shaping the future of our community. Firstly, mass media and the internet are informing more people about HomeLink and home exchange. This will create significant growth and thus more opportunities for our members. The internet in particular has already had a huge impact on the development of friendships within the community and on the speed and frequency of exchange arrangements. We seek to harness this technology and will add value to our members' experience through this website. We have several exciting initiatives planned - more will be revealed at a later date!

Secondly, home exchange provides a real alternative to the social and environmental issues of modern travel. It provides an ethical way to see places of the world without contributing to their demise. Traditional resort tourism frequently results in irreversible environmental and cultural erosion from over-development, leading to ultimate economic decline in the area. Home exchange, on the other hand, facilitates sustainable growth. It places no additional burden on the natural resources and maintains the local identity, thus preserving the popularity of an area. Even if you exchange to a resort location, you can be confident that you will only bring positive benefits to the local community!

We have an exciting future and hope that you want to become part of it. If you would like to get a more in-depth feel for the HomeLink community, we invite you to enter our Visitors area. If you like our site, then help us grow! Follow the HomeLink tradition and tell your friends about us.

Wherever you are or whatever you are doing, thank you again for dropping in. We hope to "see" you around in the HomeLink community!