Nice Work
Congratulations to Ben Southall, the 34-year-old British man, who fought off competition from 34,000 applicants to land the ‘Best Job in The World’.
As regular readers to this column will know, that job is to be caretaker on palm-fringed Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia for six months with a hefty salary, a villa and a very modest work schedule.
Ben, a project manager, sounds like an all-action man – in his spare time he runs a music festival and keeps fit running marathons, climbing, scuba diving, bungee-jumping and mountain-biking.
“The most important thing to me in life is to have an exciting job that makes me happy, puts smiles on people’s faces and achieves challenging goals,” he said.
Tourism Queensland is also extremely content. Global interest in the competition was so great that in the first two days, 200,000 people logged on to the islandreefjob.com website, causing the server to crash.
Tourism Queensland spent £830,000 ($1.25 million) on the campaign, but it’s estimated to have generated more than £54 million ($81 million) in free advertising.
Also happy is Ben Southall’s Canadian girlfriend, Bre -she’s accompanying him to paradise.
by Andy Moreton
Don’t forget that even though you didn’t win, you can still enjoy the magic of the Great Barrier Reef at the Hayman Island Resort, bookable through Luxique.
