All aboard! Virtual travel hits aged care homes

It’s 11am on a Tuesday, and Rhonda and Rob Looney are flying high in a helicopter, enjoying a panoramic view of New York City. As the helicopter banks, a tour guide points out the One World Trade Centre tower, the Empire State Building and Central Park. As well as flagging famous sights, the guide advises that in Manhattan, you can still buy pizza by the slice for $1.

But this font of all knowledge is a hologram, and this 20-minute helicopter ride isn’t real. The passengers aboard the Olive Express are sitting in a virtual travel room that’s been furnished to resemble a train carriage. The room is set up inside a truck, parked today outside St Vincent’s Hospital’s Berengarra aged care facility in Kew, in Melbourne’s east.

Since its launch as a social enterprise two years ago, the Olive Express has taken 23,000 trips across more than 100 aged care homes across Australia. Virtual journeys on offer include a train trip through the Swiss Alps, a boat voyage past Phoenix Ancient Town in China and a bus ride around London. Rhonda Looney said her husband, a retired plumber who has Alzheimer’s, hasn’t travelled a lot, but loved the tall buildings in a virtual Tokyo train trip.

“He said, ‘I can’t believe Richmond has grown so much!’” Rhonda said. Rob declared the New York helicopter trip “boring”, but Rhonda loved it.

Berengarra resident Tony Rainer has never been to New York, nor flown in a helicopter. “It’s interesting,” Rainer said. Olive Express founder Che Turner said the idea for the enterprise came to him in a dream, and was inspired by his late grandmother, Violet Olive.

Having lived in England for 10 years, where he worked as a chef for the royal family, Turner spent his spare time taking train trips with Violet from their home in Windsor, to London, Oxford and Bath. When Turner returned to Brisbane in 2017, he trained to work in aged care and eventually moved into management. It was here that he devised the idea for the Olive Express as a fresh new activity.

Along with his wife Kim Chatterjee, Turner bought an old delivery van and fitted it out with four screens, and after successful trials in Brisbane, aged care companies such as Bupa signed up. There are now 10 Olive Express trucks leased to facilities in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and a healthy waiting list. Aged care companies pay fees to Olive Express, which Turner said goes towards funding and building more trucks instead of making a profit.

His reward, he said, was “the joy I see on people’s faces, and in seeing people’s worlds open up”. Sarah Macdonald, the lifestyle co-ordinator at Berengarra, said the venue had hosted two booked-out daily sessions for two weeks. “It’s something different,” she said.

“It encourages reminiscence and conversation ... And it’s social.” But one voyager had to leave, mid-session.

“She got motion sick,” Macdonald said. “It’s not for everyone.” Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights.

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