For three weeks I ventured around the “deep south” of Australia with a good friend of mine. We were filming everything we possibly could for a series of segments called Couch Away for the Perth based variety and chat show The Couch.
The Couch is now broadcasting across Australia on Foxtel’s Aurora channel, and this year they’ve started up in New Zealand on Face TV. The only problem is, the cast and crew are stuck in Perth… enter me, based in Brisbane with no strings attached (aside from this website and work!) So my job now as National Correspondent is to file reports on a wide range of topics … best of all I get to take working holidays!
A working holiday, to me, doesn’t neccessarily mean I get paid to travel – but it does mean that a lot of the expenses can be written down as a sponsorship. As such, Eagles Nest Retreat, the Molle Street townhouse, Stewarts Bay Lodge and the Central Highlands Lodge all put us up as travelling media… and what great accommodations they are too! (Go on, check out their websites!)
We visited Cradle Mountain, Sheffield (the town of murials), Tasmazia (a pretty impressive hedge maze complex, and the largest in the southern hemisphere!) Hobart, Mt Wellington (with snow!) and we also checked out the usual tourist spots like the Port Arthur Historical Site, which was one of the toughest convict prisons from Australia’s colonial time.
Before Tasmania though, I challenged courier company TNT to a race from Brisbane to Melbourne… where they would take one of my roadcases and get it to their Melbourne depot. Unfortunatley, they beat me by a day and a half… but that’s because they have planes and a fleet of vans and drivers! Through the magic of television, though, my defeat will only be an hour or two! (Huge thanks to Kat and the team at TNT and Jan at Coptercam for the aerial shots. Also, I can’t forget the Able Tasman Motor Inn in Dubbo for putting us up for our first night away!
There will be four segments produced for The Couch to air from early November and I’ll post them here as well for you to view.
