Edu School Tours director Lucy Robertson not seen since February

NSW teenagers have been left “extremely disappointed” after the demise of a tour company run by a Victorian woman who has stopped answering questions from concerned parents and students.

The collapsed company Edu School Tours offered space camp tours in the US.

A NSW school is the sixth in the nation to be affected by the multi-million dollar demise of a Victorian company offering USA Space Camp tours.

Students from Forest High School have paid $10,000 each to go to the United States in five weeks’ time on a trip organised by Edu School Tours.

The company has collapsed and the director, Victorian woman Lucy Robertson, has stopped answering questions from concerned parents and teachers.

Questions are being asked about money already paid to the company, with suggestions the company holds up to $2.5m from students and their families from across Australia.

Edu school Tours Director Lucy Robertson stopped answering questions from parents and teachers.

She has not been seen since she started cancelling meetings with students, teachers and parents in mid February, claiming to be sick in hospital.

More than 100 devastated students from Camberwell High School and Star of the Sea College in Victoria have already paid up to $10,000 each for the trips, which will now not take place.

Around 150 students from three other schools in Western Australia - Penrhos College, Perth Modern and Christ Church Grammar - have also paid at least a million dollars to Ms Robertson’s company.

There are also claims students from at least one Queensland school have been impacted.

Ms Robertson, also known as Lucy Fenwick, is not returning calls but her website still proclaims the company to be the “#1 leading Australian company taking students to Space Camp”.

A parent from Forest High School in the Sydney suburb of Frenchs Forest said staff and parents were meant to meet Ms Robertson on February 12 but the meeting was cancelled on the day. The students were due to leave on April 10.

The parent said she wanted to know what “due diligence the Department of Education is conducting prior to promoting and approving these trips to parents”.

“This is a lot of money and is extremely disappointing for all the children and the teachers involved,” she said.

Forest High School last ran the Space Camp program in 2019. Students spent a week training to be astronauts in Huntsville, Alabama, visited the Kennedy Space Centre and Universal Studios and went to Washington DC and Orlando, Florida.

The parent said she hoped the NSW government insurance would cover students’ losses.

In Victoria the state government has said it would cover losses from the company’s collapse through their insurer, but this does not extend to private school students.

The company is understood to have struggled during Covid lockdowns, with Ms Robertson posting on a Kew East Community site about being “at least 12-18 months away from revenue and income”.

Redspear Holdings has been operating since 2017 out of a luxury five-bedroom house in semi-rural Eden Hills in Victoria. The home in Seventh Ave was sold for $1.4m last May, but due to a caveat on the property, didn’t settle until January 2024.

Mark Fenwick is listed as the sole shareholder of Redspear holdings. It‘s understood the company has not lodged a tax return for the 2022/23 tax year and has been dropped by national travel accreditation companies.