Mat McLachlan is one of Australia’s leading war historians and battlefield guides, and has spent almost two decades following in the footsteps of Australian troops on battlefields around the world.

His 2007 book, Walking with Anzacs, is considered the definitive guide to Australian battlefields on the Western Front. It was reprinted in 2008, 2009 and 2011.

Mat also produced and appears in the First World War documentary Lost in Flanders, which aired on the ABC in April 2009.

His second book, Gallipoli: The Battlefields Guide, was published in 2010 and is the most comprehensive guide to the Australian battlefields of Gallipoli yet published.

He also appears regularly as a historian on the ABC, The History Channel, Channel 7’s Sunrise and Radio 2GB.

In 2008 Mat launched Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours, which has grown to become Australia’s most successful battlefield tour company. In 2020, Mat’s passion for bringing to life stories from the battlefields saw him launch Living History which offers free Youtube documentaries and podcasts – including the popular Battle Walks podcast which Mat co-hosts with war historian Pete Smith, as well as publishing books. In 2021 Mat launched Battlefield Tours (UK), especially designed to focus on British war history.

Mat is the founder of Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours and personally designs all our tours. 

Jon’s curiosity about the First World War was sparked as a young boy listening to the stories of veterans in his village. His interest in the military and the Great War increased when he researched his own relative’s actions and became fascinated by the part that they played.

Jon served in the Territorial Army for five years, furthering his understanding and knowledge of the military. He went on to increase his love of all eras of military history when he returned to education to study at degree level. The course also developed his abilities for researching and interpreting historical documents. Having completed his History degree he took the decision in 2005 to move with his family to the Somme and convert this interest into a career.

Jon has been guiding full time since 2006 and undertakes tours of the various regions of the western front as well as other sites such as Agincourt and Waterloo. Jon is a member of the European Tour Operators Association and the Somme Battlefield Partners.

Mike Peters is an ex British Army officer with more than 30 years of military service in the Army Air Corps. Commissioned from the ranks, he has served on numerous operational tours on the ground and in the air in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mike has been leading battlefield tours for just over 40 years. Fascinated by Australian military history he has been with the Mat McLachlan Battlefields Team since 2010.  Since those early days, Mike has led our Anzac tours to the battlefields of the Western Front, the shores of Gallipoli, and as far afield as the historic stomping ground of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba. Mike has also taken Australians to to follow their forbears across the WW2 battlefields of Crete and Sicily.

Mike was Chair of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides for 12 years. He is also the author of several WW2 history books on the Glider Pilot Regiment and the US Eighth Air Force. He is a regular speaker at the National Army Museum in London, the UK’s Army Flying Museum and is a regular TV Historian. His most recent publication is a two-volume Operational History of the Army Air Corps.

Steve is a Melbourne based Tour guide & an Infantry Section Commander in the Army Reserve. He has been on several OS peace keeping deployments & has formal language training in Thai, Tetum & Pijin.

He has a keen interest in Military History, traditions, languages & culture. He is very active in the Ex Service Organisation and young veteran space as well as social projects in East Timor & Papua New Guinea. He is on the East Malvern RSL & Victorian Scottish Regiment Association committees. 

Steve was sponsored to go to The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo performing throughout Scotland, The Tower of London & Menin Gate with the Pipes & Drums.

Craig Roach, aka “Roachie”, has been involved in tourism and travel operations for nearly 30 years. His expertise has led him across the globe. ‘Roachie’ first visited the Gallipoli battlefield 30 years ago and since that time has helped train Turkish guides and run workshops about the Gallipoli campaign each year.

Craig has an enormous and still growing amount of knowledge on the subject. He has taken thousands of people to the site over these years and feels that he knows ‘what people want and expect’ out of a visit to Anzac. He believes that everyone has an Anzac story, whether they came with that story, a family connection, or whether they leave with a story. Craig sees these stories as a legacy to future generations who will follow.

Roachie is also a budding artist and brings other budding artists to soak in the sheer beauty and tragedy of this place, known locally as ‘The Gallipoli Artist’ there are few sunsets with a bottle of local wine that escape him at Anzac.

Nigel has been deeply involved in researching the history of the Great War, and the experiences of the men and women who served through it, beginning with members of his own family, since early childhood. He served in the British Army for seven years, specialising in the maintenance and repair of tank and artillery weapons systems, paving the way for a later career in mechanical engineering and precision machining. He also worked in the construction of the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank.

Gradually converting three decades’ worth of battlefield tourism experience into his full-time occupation as a battlefield guide and military historian, Nigel now lives on Somme battlefields, and can claim a view, in good weather, of the Thiepval Memorial from his office window.

An experienced and tenacious researcher, Nigel, with the aid of a growing library of books counted in the thousands, has contributed acknowledged research work to several published authors, and has fulfilled research projects on hundreds of military personnel of the Great War from all the major Commonwealth nations involved. He is a firm believer that everyone who served, in whatever capacity, and whatever their fate may have been, has a story waiting to be told that is just waiting to be discovered.

Nigel is a member of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides, The Western Front Association, and is a founding member of the recently created Great War Group.

From a very young age Richard found history captivating, visiting castles and learning how people had lived sparked his lifelong fascination of discovering more about the past. This interest led him to researching battlefield history, which truly fascinated him and led him to accumulate a large collection of military history books and militaria – mostly connected to the First World War.

In 1989 he fulfilled his childhood dream of joining the Royal Marines. After successfully passing his commando training he served around the globe on exercise and operational tours in various environments from the arctic to the jungle and mountains to desserts – acquiring his own personal experience of the military and how it operates. It was during this period in his life, in the 1990’s, that he began to tour the battlefields of the Western Front.

He now lives on the Somme Battlefield, and has been guiding visitors on the battlefields since 2009.

His client feedback often describes him as a friendly and relaxed guide who clearly loves to share his extensive knowledge.

Tom learned about the Great War as a small boy, listening to the stories of relatives who lived through it. It’s perhaps because of this introduction that he became fascinated with the stories of ordinary people in those extraordinary times and with the battlefields themselves, which he has visited for over 30 years.

Tom’s professional background is in Education with a long teaching career up to 1999, when he became a full-time battlefield guide. Tom’s Hellfire Corner website, which he began in 1996, was one of the first Great War internet sites, with almost 3.5 million visitors to date.

Tom has a superb knowledge of the Australian battlefields and is the War Historian on many of our Western Front tours, having also guided for us in Gallipoli.

Gary McKay spent 30 years as an army officer after being conscripted for national service in 1968. He served in South Vietnam in 1971 as an infantry rifle platoon commander where he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and severely wounded in the last major Australian battle of the Vietnam War.

In 1987 Gary’s best-selling autobiography In Good Company was released and he began what is now a full-time career as a non-fiction writer and freelance historian. He is Australia’s most prolific writer on the subject of the Vietnam War having released 12 books with Allen & Unwin. Two of his latest, Australia’s Battlefields in Vietnam and Going Backhave been highly acclaimed by veterans who have returned to Vietnam and those wanting to see where Australia fought during the war. Gary has been returning to Vietnam every year since 1993 and there is no better guide to the Australian battlefields of Vietnam and we are fortunate to have Gary as the historian on our Vietnam tours.

Mark has been visiting the Western Front for many years, taking friends and family and trying to fit in visits around his full time employment. In 2015 he decided to take the plunge and leave his job to focus fully on developing his passion for the battlefields into a role as a Guide.

Mark believes that a visit to the battlefields should not be just about remembering but also learning, as only through gaining an understanding of what our ancestors went through, and why, can we fully pay our respects for their sacrifice and achievements. He likes to get off the beaten track and discover some of the less visited but often very poignant sites. He is a particular advocate of walking the battlefield to literally ‘follow in the footsteps’  and has led our Western Front  Walking Tour.

In 2019, Mark graduated with a Master’s degree in the History of the First World War. His thesis involved a study of the Battle of Messines and in particular the ANZAC actions. Mark is a member of the Western Front Association and an associate member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides.

Rob has always had a passion for history, and in 2000 he made a lifechanging career move, from an accountant to a tourist guide in the Cistercian Abbey of Villers (Belgium) while at the same time undertaking guide and history training in Brussels. Rob   undertook his guide and historian training three evenings each week for two years to obtain a Diploma at a Belgian Tourist Guide, and then in 2010 he became a Certified City Guide in Bruges. Rob had a strong interest in military history, and in 2011 and 2012 he completed historian-focussed courses to guide the battlefield of Waterloo and the battlefields of Flanders Fields. In 2018 Rob Brike joined Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours’ team of Historians, guiding Australians in the footsteps of the Anzacs and Commonwealth soldiers on the Western Front.