Back in the driving seat I suppose! After a month away relaxing in South Africa; running double marathons, giving presentations to digital marketing companies and the media and attending a couple of weddings I thought it was about time I headed home (or where I call home these days) to Brisbane and Queensland to do some work, and keep finding out what the rest of this awesome state has on offer – that is what my job is all about even though it sounds like more and more fun!

As soon as I’d landed and thrown my clothes in the washing machine it was straight back out to meet and greet the team from Channel News Asia; Amelia the producer, Sophian the cameraman and the presenter Tim.

They’re over from Singapore to film the final installment in a series entitled “I get paid to do what I love” that features people who have great jobs, which they thoroughly enjoy, and mine qualifies!

Over the course of the next three days I take them around some of the sights and activities which southern Queensland has on offer and here are just a few of the highlights:

Riverlife Outdoor Activity Centre – based right in the centre of the city Riverlife has become an institution and offers so many different activities you’ll never get bored. With Tim fresh out of the office it was a little harder than I ‘d hoped to get him into the Island Caretaker’s lifstyle and trying out what was on offer.

I did manage to get him onto the water with a little bit of persuasion from Amelia his producer and into a kayak…although you can see from the photos that he didn’t do too much work – in fact I ended up towing him up the river whilst he read the newspaper!

Once we dried off it was time for activity number two, abseiling. But this time Tim was nowhere to be seen…where had he gone? Come on you’re meant to be enjoying this and taking part! Now I’ve never particularly liked heights so the thought of lowering myself off the cliffs at Kangaroo Point wasn’t something I raced to do…but life is all about taking on your fears and this was no exception!

Blair my instructor had setup all of the kit at the top and once Sophian the cameraman was ready I put on the harness and prepared to lower myself over the rather high edge. Keep smiling Ben – you’re on camera here! Once I’d conquered the edge and lowered myself far enough down to become horizontal it was all a little easier and I made my way to the ground below….what?? You need me to do it again? Oh you’ve got to love the world of television!

Story Bridge Climb – With my temporary fear of heights conquered it was time to test it out again with a rather different form of altitude-induced giddiness. The iconic Story Bridge spans the Brisbane River between Kangaroo Point and Fortitude Valley and a walkway allows people to walk over the superstructure giving unbeatable views of the city surrounds. As the sun drops out of the winter sky and beyond the horizon the sound of the traffic far below is lost as we all stand there and soak up the moment together. I’ve done this twice now and I can promise the experience doesn’t fail to loose its appeal.

Cloudland – The is one place to take a film-crew for dinner is you want to impress them and that’s Cloudland. It really is unique in Brisbane and probably Australia. Based on four levels this super-club has a fully retracting roof for those sultry nights, a huge white marble bar downstairs and then upstairs a crazy bubble bar. The place is designed to the eyeballs and has so many cool/strange/bizarre/interesting corners and design features. Well worth a look if you’re in the area.

Tangalooma Resort – The life of an Island Caretaker of course revolved around the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef but to highlight the lifestyle in a single day we had to head a little closer to home – Moreton Island is only 90 minutes away from Brisbane by boat. We all headed across Moreton Bay and soon the familiar sight of Tangalooma resort came into view. Once we’d tied up, Henk the manager was there to meet us and told us of our busy day’s activities. First stop the drive inland to ‘The Desert‘ for a spot of sand tobogganing. We had great fun flying down the sandy slopes and I even remembered to keep my mouth closed after eating half the dune last time around when I was here with Bre last year. The vast expanses of white sand really are a sight to behold and the mainly Asian market who accompanied us up there loved every second of it.

No time for resting though as the afternoon had more fun lined up with an ATV bike ride up around the off-road course filming some of the ‘normal’ activities I get to do in my job. As the sun dropped out of the sky once more there was time for one more activity before heading back to the mainland – feeding the dolphins! Even though I’ve done this before the feeling of hand feeding these incredible creatures just doesn’t get any more fascinating. The one thing I learnt this time was that in the past the dolphins have actually brought gifts back to the marine biologists who feed them including fish and eels which are now kept in a preserving tank! How cool is that?

We head down to the Gold Coast for the next couple of days…

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary – Having been restricted to mainly the islands during the Best Job I hadn’t been down the coast to some of the really amazing wildlife sanctuary’s and a visit to Currumbin was well overdue. The place is huge covering roughly the same area as the theme park Movie World and really accessible with wide open spaces filled with some of Australia’s best known animals. But there are other things going on behind the scenes which we took time to film, the introduction of a new animal hospital which has recently opened adds a new, educational side to the sanctuary and one which is essential for the local community too.

Jonathon (CEO) and Andrew (Vet) showed us around and explained that how the hospital has be such an important addition to the local animal welfare community with the RSPCA and other organisations bringing their injured wild patients to the hospital for treatment. They have around 30 cases arriving everyday. Their most common casualties are the Rainbow Headed Lorikeets who fly at ridiculous speeds but unfortunately sometimes into buildings and cars. One of their more unusal patients is the Echidna which we met and was run over by a car resulting in a broken rear leg. Poor thing and with all those needles it looked even more sorry for itself!

The sanctuary itself was full of people all enjoying and learning about Australia’s wildlife with shows, demonstrations and even a mini-train which takes you from area to area past the too-chilled-out kangaroos, the slightly odd emus and onto the aboriginal dance show. Now I’ve come to realise that as soon as I go anywhere near one of these I am instantly recruited to dance…I have two left feet and can’t!! Always good fun for everyone watching, not so good for me.

As we leave the sanctuary I have to show the crew the beach here at Currumbin. I mean it’s a perfect winter’s day, it’s the weekend and the surfers are all out on the last few waves of the day so hopefully we can pick up some tips for the morning as our last activity is exactly that….

Surfing with ‘Go Ride A Wave’ – As the alarm rings I realise that the late night sat up watching the FIFA World Cup may not have been such a good idea as I’m exhausted and ready to sleep some more…but as I look out of the window I realise that the surf actually looks superb through the window and not being someone to waste a moment I head down to the beach to meet the crew and Sam our instructor for the morning’s endeavours.

I’ve surfed a few times before but never to any sort of decent standard and as we kit up and head out the waves look particularly destructive…it’s low tide, there’s a sandbar right in front of us and the waves are crashing down onto it…could make the paddle out interesting anyway!

Tim and I have a great time getting smashed by the waves, swallowing litres of the Pacific Ocean and emptying the sand out of our eyes/ears/nose and before we know it the lesson is over. But like every surfer knows…just one more wave!

Job done…

It’s been a superb couple of days into which we have crammed as much as we can to give the crew from Channel News Asia and idea of exactly why it is called ‘The Best Job in the World’ and enough material for them to produce their 23 minute episode as the season finale of their program. Greg transports us all back up the coast to Brisbane where the crew jump on-board their flight back to Singapore and I head home to unpack, wash and start to get used to life in Brisbane for more than a ten day period. I haven’t had that since moving here in January!!

Once the program has been edited and is ready to go to air I will make sure I put it up here for you all to see!

Over the next few weeks I intend trying out lots of the local attractions around the area and reporting the experiences all back here to the blog for you to read about. On top of that there’s the Gold Coast marathon looming large on Sunday 4th July which I hope I’ve done enough training for and of course planning my expedition ready for next year.

Life continues at the usual crazy pace…

Oh one more thing before I go, if you haven’t seen my new series on National Geographic that has been aired worldwide over the last few weeks then you can get onto this website and download them all…they make the perfect present for someone you really don’t like!

DOWNLOAD THEM HERE

Over and out

Ben