Gap Year Advice and Information

Austailian Adventures

Twenty year-old, Caroline Cook from Suffolk headed off in search of sun, surf and a whole lot more on Work Australia.

“After school I wanted to have a year off before I entered university.  Australia is a country that I had always wanted to visit, and being able to work and travel there for up to a year, seemed like too good an opportunity to turn down! 

I arrived in Sydney in late November and decided that I would stay there for a few months, to enjoy the summer and the New Year.  I found work as a waitress and moved into a shared house in a leafy suburb of Sydney.  Christmas was spent on Bondi beach and New Year involved hanging out with thousands of others at Circle Quay, drinking in the sun and watching the fireworks at midnight before heading down to Coogee beach to watch the first sunrise of the New Year. After Sydney, I headed to Melbourne, where I did various jobs including working at the Australian Grand Prix which was a great experience. 

I decided to head to a small town to sample the outback way of life and ended up in South Australia via the Great Ocean Road.  I lived in a small friendly ‘working’ hostel where we all fruit picked.  The work was quite gruelling, but our partying definitely matched it!  We could often be found swimming in the lake in the early hours of the morning and we became regulars at the local pub.

From South Australia I headed to Uluru on a tour, sleeping in swags under the Southern Cross.  Then we went on to Cairns and down the east coast.  Swimming on the Great Barrier Reef, sailing around the Whit Sundays, four-wheel driving across the beaches on Fraser Island and chilling in Byron Bay – that was definitely the life!

With friends, I headed over to the west coast where we bought a camper van for about £100.  It got us from Perth to Broome and very nearly back to Perth again!  The west coast was a stark contrast to the partying east coast.  It is stunning, vast and largely untouched.

After Australia, I decided to come back via Thailand and spent a month or so travelling around all the beautiful islands and enjoying this laid back way of life.  Basically I was a beach bum! I had an amazing year in Oz and would definitely recommend getting over there and seeing as much of it as you can fit in

BUNAC’s Work Australia gave me the confidence to do all this. Everything was sorted out for me before we left; I even had a list of other people on the flight to e-mail. I made some great friends amongst the group I flew out with; we still keep in touch now!  If you are thinking of taking a gap year I think you couldn’t pick a better country to go than Australia! I had an amazing year in Oz and would definitely recommend getting over there and seeing as much of it as you can fit in”

For more information on BUNAC’s Work Australia go to www.bunac.org or call (020) 7251 3472 now!