OK, so this is the first time I've ever written a blog so you'll have to bear with me. Why am I doing a blog? Well basically it's because I was asked to in the Autumn of 2009 by the lovely people at statravelbuzz.com as a travel guide to give tips to other travellers who might be going to Australia or elsewhere, but also to act as an online diary too.
So here it goes...It all began back in the Summer of 2009 in early July when I was told by a friend from Lancaster University that STA Travel were offering tickets for just £10 to Australia. I thought as you would, that surely there must be a catch to this, so to cut a long story short I went onto the STA Travel site and saw this offer : http://www.statravel.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/uk_division_web_live/hs.xsl/promo5.htm
STA Travel in association with the Australian Tourist Board were offering 1 way, non refundable tickets to Australia on Qantas for just £10...the only catch was that you had to pre register, have a valid passport, a working holiday visa for Australia and that you got to one of the stores across the United Kingdom doing the offer, (Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, London, Cardiff, Southampton, Belfast, Leeds and Birmingham...I they're all right) before they ran out of tickets. Apparantly Tourism Australia had subsidised the tickets as they want more under 30s from the UK going out to Australia on 12 month working holiday visas. Added to that STA is 30 years old and it is 50 years since the original post second world war £10 POMS went over and as you can imagine, the media interest both in the United Kingdom and Australia was what can only be described as MASSIVE.
Being from Horwich, a small town in Lancashire (not that mythical place called Greater Manchester) inbetween Bolton, Chorley and Wigan and just over the West Pennine Moors from Blackburn (yes, no man's land), the logical option was to get on the train for 25 minutes and queue up in Manchester City Centre, so that's what I did, I went to Manchester...and then I got on the Megabus to Brum! Logic would have dictated that I should queue at Albert Square in Manchester, which would have been a lot easier, but this was for one of 150 tickets to Oz for just ten pounds (or with a stopover an optional £15 surcharge) and there's no logic in that either!!! Anyways off I went to Corporation Street in Birmingham armed with a small bag of clothes and a sleeping bag to find myself number 8 in the queue (that unbeknown to us was guarenteed 10 of the 150 tickets, well 145 with 5 kept back as lucky golden tickets) in the overcast and damp world of Brum, whereas Manchester was basking in sunshine.
Having met my friend Emma from uni, who I am now going travelling with, we went in search of a camping shop and bought a tent that would be our home and shelter from the elements from Monday 3rd August 2009 for the next 2 nights on Corporation Street until tickets went on sale on the Wednesday 5th August...My advice to anyone buying a tent, particularly a pop up one is to make sure you can actually put it down again and pack it away, unlike us who had to carry it inflated through the streets of Birmingham to the shop we bought it from on the Wednesday to ask them to put it down! Wooops.
Anyway without getting into too many boring details 2 and a half months later and at the unsociable hour that is 03:22 BST, the experience that was those 3 days in Birmingham will live with me forever....Not only did I get a one way ticket to Australia for ten quid, get interviewed by ITV Central News (btw, if anyone randomly has a copy or a link to that, please get in touch) and have an ace time drinking and socialising with comrades who were after the same thing as me, the entire experience being like a music festival but without the mud, the main thing I took from all that is that I met a lot of great people and made a lot of new friends, many of whom I hope to see in Oz very soon!!!
Anyways Im gonna head off as it's nearly 3:30am and in the morning I need to crack on with some jobs I have to do before I go in like 28 days, jobs such as buy a decent backpack, sell my car, get travel insurance, sort somewhere to stay in Thailand for the stopover, sort somewhere for Christmas and New Year in Sydney and sort my general stuff out in the 'rents house before I go...busy times. I'll leave you with some pictures of the Birmingham POMS: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=22386&id=1613550009&l=edf3c36066
Cheers,
Ste
