The landscapes, people and experiences of Australia provide the inspiration for a new online marketing campaign by Tourism Australia, which is using talented musicians to showcase the destination to an international audience of millions.

The Making Tracks campaign sees four international classical musicians from the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 each paired up with a contemporary Australian musician and sent on a journey of discovery across Australia.

Each musical pair was tasked with composing a piece of original music inspired by the trip and their creative collaboration. Each journey was filmed and is being told through a series of four short musical episodes which are being broadcast on YouTube and via Tourism Australia’s digital and social media channels.

Between them the musicians travelled to every state and territory in Australia and participated in a range of experiences, which included surfing at Bondi beach, swimming with dolphins off Rockingham, enjoying the sun set over Uluru, penguin-spotting on Kangaroo Island, taking a helicopter flight over the Twelve Apostles, trekking across the Western Wilderness in Tasmania, hot air ballooning over Canberra and 4-wheel driving on Fraser Island.

Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy believes that the creative collaboration with YouTube will enable Tourism Australia to reach new markets by broadening its messaging and focusing on music and the arts.

“Making Tracks has given us a great opportunity to connect with a global audience in an innovative and engaging way. These eight musicians have enjoyed their very own magical musical mystery tour of Australia, and their journeys and musical compositions have opened up some of the country’s most iconic destinations and experiences to a new online audience. It’s been an amazing journey for everyone involved and a unique way to demonstrate why there really is nothing like Australia when it comes to inspiring creativity,” said Mr McEvoy.

Tourism Australia is supporting YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 through its global public relations activities such as the international media hosting and visiting opinion leader programs.

Tourism Australia’s work with YouTube is part of an already successful digital marketing strategy, highlights of which include a YouTube-branded channel and the recent There’s nothing like Australia marketing campaign, which has encouraged thousands of people around the world to share their favourite Australian experience.

The four classical musicians – from America (two), Taiwan and the UK - are part of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011, which will perform at the Sydney Opera House on March 20.

The first YouTube Symphony Orchestra saw more than 90 musicians from over 30 countries play a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall in New York as well as attracting 25 million views from 226 countries to the Symphony channel (youtube.com/symphony).

YouTube is the world’s largest online video community, with two billion video streams a day, and 35 hours of video content uploaded per minute.