We've Booked!

'Come fly with me...'

So happy to finally say that after what feels like months and months of planning and talking about what we were going to do, Jack and myself FINALLY got around to putting our deposits down with OzIntro, applied for our work visas and booked our flights. It’s been a tricky process, with a ton of e-mails, phone calls and ‘reconvening’ Facetime sessions in-between, but thanks to the ridiculously helpful people at Gap Year Travel, we managed to find a changeable return flight with Emirates for just £900 and a discounted ten-night voucher for Base Backpackers Hostels, which are situated all over Australia. Admittedly, the pain for my bank account is far from over, as we still need to buy our travel insurance and pay off the rest of the package costs with OzIntro, but in all honesty I’m just excited to start thinking about the real issues - like what do I wear on the plane?!

No Longer an Ink Virgin

'Wanderlust - A Great desire or impulse to travel the world and rove about.' 

Snaphappy

The Canon PowerShot SX500 IS

I'm the first to admit that I don't know the first thing when it comes to cameras. If they take a photo, they're usually pretty fine by me. But the one thing I've been told the most, is that a good camera is vital when exploring another country. But where do you even begin? It's all megapixels this, and optical zoom that, and for someone like myself, it might as well all be written in French. For me the specifications were simple: small and light enough to move around with, good quality photos and videos, a Li-lon battery and most importantly - reasonably affordable! 

I didn’t get very far when I looked online, as everything that looked remotely like I wanted was all £250+. Then as if by magic, during one Sunday evening’s viewing of Downton Abbey, I saw the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS advertised from Argos, for a beautifully eye-catching £139. 16MP, 30x optical zoom and with a three-inch LCD screen, this camera is not only up there with the best technology wise, but also small, light and compact enough to make travelling with considerably easier. 

Shopping Around

Just a few of the options available to you

If like me, you’re choosing to go travelling with the help of a company and organisation, such as Bunac or STA Travel etc, it’s vital to look around and conduct thorough research before making any big decisions of who to go with. After aimlessly typing “working in Australia” into Google one day (no doubt I was probably sitting in a lecture bored at that time), I was overwhelmed by the amount of results and the vast number of choices available. For the first-time traveller, such as myself, I was looking for an organisation to fly out with, something that would introduce me to living in Australia and would eventually get me on my way to working and earning out there. Of course this isn’t everyone’s first choice. A lot of people don’t see the sense in paying £400/500 to get ‘settled in’, when they could just book a flight and work it out for themselves for free when they got there. That’s all well and true, but for those of us that like that little extra bit of security and forward planning, these are just a couple of the great options available...

Bit by the Travelling Bug

Well, okay, not literally. For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to travel. Even going back ten years as to when I started Secondary School, I can still remember that first ‘introduce yourself to the class’ session that every eleven-year-old child dreads. 

“Hi...I’m Chloe. I like to write and I want to travel the world someday.”

To be fair, eleven-year-old me knew what she was on about. Seven years on I chose my degree of Multimedia Journalism at Canterbury Christ Church University and so began my future of writing in a new place. Of course, Canterbury was hardly Timbuktu, and although my halls of residence were certainly questionable at times, I was hardly slumming it backpackers-style in a hostel somewhere. Nevertheless, those three years I spent away from home provided me with both the life and professional experience needed in order to one day make that big move abroad.