The Best Job in the World

How to Make a Living From Following Your Dreams

Ben Southall

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780730313779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

The true story of the man with the Best Job in the World

The Best Job in the World is the story of how following your passions can lead to life-changing opportunities. Adventurer Ben Southall shares his experiences and lessons learned as the winner of the inaugural Tourism Queensland's Best Job in the World campaign, and reveals how this has led to ongoing opportunities since. Part autobiography, part insight into the power of a unique marketing campaign, this book follows Ben's journey—from leaving the UK on his own expedition around Africa to his new role as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef. You'll learn about the skills and experiences that shaped Ben's path, together with the inevitable pitfalls that he faced along the way to living his dream.

The sole winner of the Best Job in the World campaign, Ben's perspective is a unique one to share the serious challenges that arose from being catapulted into a high profile job in an idyllic location. Humorous and poignant, the story is as much holistic life guide as travel guide, providing a motivational and inspirational tale that may just be the push you need to:

• Get inspired—see the opportunities around you and grab them with both hands
• Embrace the unknown, overcome life's obstacles and challenge expectations
• Live out your dreams and be your authentic self
• Climb out of the rut and take part in the world around you

In The Best Job in the World, Ben Southall answers the questions everyone is asking: "What is it like? Is it really the best job in the world?" You'll learn how to transform your interests and passions into a flexible, long-term career, and how following the road less travelled can lead to living your best life. If you're dissatisfied, stuck in a rut or merely curious, The Best Job in the World is a must-read tale of aspiration, inspiration and motivation.

CHAPTER 1
Finding my way

Despite the success I've enjoyed in my adult life, I always struggled in school. My first memory of it was sitting in a classroom in Bournes Green Infant School at age six wasting an entire morning working out whether ‘this morning’ should be written as one word or two.

It didn't get much better when I moved up to the junior school. I can't quite remember how at the age of eight I managed to send my teacher home in tears, but suffice to say Ms Murray didn't list me as one of her favourite pupils. My school report constantly referred to my inability to concentrate in class.

Back in 1985, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) wasn't recognised. My hyperactivity as a child was blamed on excessive E-numbers in my food and drink. I clearly remember being forbidden to drink orange and lemon squash because they contained a dangerous combination of the additives E102 and E110.

Mum and Dad struggled with my schooling, especially on the annual Parents’ Evening. I dreaded their first words when they got back. I would ask optimistically, ‘How did it go?’, hoping that one day they'd say, ‘You've been a model student, Ben. Well done’. It never happened. My sister Becky got enough brains for both of us, always topping the class and putting me to shame. She's been a source of inspiration all my life, but I felt that as the older sibling it should have been the other way around.

An education

One of my favourite subjects at school was geography. Learning about the world and what makes it tick provided fuel for my mind even at an early age. As soon as I opened my first National Geographic magazine with its yellow-framed cover, I was hooked. I remember folding out the map of an unknown country and poring over it, mesmerised by all the squiggly lines, trying to work out what the legend meant.

Seeing magnificent images of distant lands and strange-looking people only added to my fascination and curiosity. In my final year at Bournes Green, I crossed the path of a teacher named Mr Barton, a bald dictator who put the fear of God in me. If I acted up in class, he'd tower over my desk and stare intensely at me from behind his thick-rimmed glasses.

‘You, Ben Southall, will amount to absolutely nothing in life if you continue as you are’, he would bellow at me across the classroom. The memory still sends shivers down my spine.

As to my other favourite class, physical education, Mr Barton did have a few good words to say in my school report: ‘In PE, Ben is extremely enthusiastic and competitive.’

It may not have meant much at the time, but what I was introduced to by those two subjects — a love of travel and physical challenge — still shape my world and motivate me every day.

When I was 10 years old my father changed jobs, which took the family from the delights of Southend in Essex to rural Hampshire. Our house no longer fronted onto a main road but instead looked across a huge arable field with glorious views of rolling countryside.

The move brought a change of schools of course, and with it a change of teacher. Enter Mrs Wilson. I walked into my classroom at Ropley School for the first time, lost in a uniform I'd ‘grow into’, with my school kitbag slung over my shoulder, and sat next to the nearest boy, Dan Kieran, who looked friendly enough.

In the corridor outside I heard the raised voice of an angry teacher before a frightened looking girl hot-stepped through the door followed by Mrs Wilson, her hand clutching a slipper raised to head height, poised for the strike.

I sat motionless for the next five minutes, watching as Jessica received every centimetre of that size nine moccasin across her backside. I'd left the city behind and arrived bang in the middle of Victorian England, where corporal punishment was standard practice.

Mrs Wilson turned out to be the best teacher I've ever had. Her tough exterior quickly melted away as she took me under her wing. I learned more about life in one year at Ropley Church of England School than I had in the previous five at Thorpe Bay. A combination of tough love and an understanding of how to channel my hyperactivity gave me direction for the first time in my school life.

Stepping up to ‘big school’ at the age of 11 was another huge shock to my system. I no longer had to walk for five minutes to get to the school gates; instead, I faced a 10-minute journey in the other direction to wait for the scary school bus. My love of sport and outdoors really took off at Perins Community School, and nowhere more than on the Wednesday cross-country run. Come rain or shine, 30 unlucky souls would take to the tracks and trails around the town in a desperate race to get back to the warmth of the showers.

I loved every minute of it — splashing through the mud, crossing the ankle-deep River Arle and fighting my way through the bramble-lined footpaths of Hampshire. There was something exhilarating about throwing off the shackles of organised sport in the school yard, being let loose in the real world to take on the elements. It felt stimulating to explore even this small corner of the planet.

Sport was fast becoming my main creative outlet. I joined the hockey team at age 11, when Perins became the first school in the county to lay an astroturf pitch. It was 1988 and England had just won gold in men's hockey at the Seoul Olympics, so I rode the wave of enthusiasm all the way to my local club, Winchester. For 10 years I couldn't get enough of it, spending five evenings a week training and playing, representing my club, Winchester; my county, Hampshire; and Kingston University.

At the time, family holidays didn't offer much insight into my future love of travel. Year after year we'd pack up the car and drive for hours to the north of Scotland to spend two weeks gazing out of a rental cottage window at the driving rain.

Yet these holidays were also wonderful. Mum and Dad loved exploring and took us on all kinds of crazy adventures around the highlands and islands of west Scotland. Their love of the great outdoors was instilled in Becky and me from an early age.

Apart from a couple of long, challenging weeks spent on French exchange programs while at school, by age 16 the only foreign adventure I'd had was a two-week school cruise around the Mediterranean. Mum and Dad saved for two years to pay for the ticket that saw me join 30 other lucky kids to explore the wonders of Greece, Israel, Egypt and Turkey.

My school shirt was signed by a hundred friends when I walked out the gates of Perins for the last time. I'd scraped through my exams, just about getting the grades required to attend Alton College. Not that I particularly wanted to go; it was simply what everyone expected of me, so I toed the line and signed up for three A levels: Design Technology, Computer Science and Physics.

It didn't take me or my teacher, Dr Colley, long to realise I'm no mathematician. Physics and figures weren't my forte so I dropped the most mind-numbing subject to concentrate on my newfound loves of design and engineering.

Dad spent 40 years working as an engineer, so a hands-on approach to technology played a huge part in my childhood. I can remember few occasions when Dad had to call on the services of a tradie of any kind, always preferring to ‘have a tinker’ himself. Although this approach can result in a few unfinished projects, it also provides a wealth of knowledge and experience of how you can fix just about anything if you put your mind to it and keep your patience.

For two years I applied myself at Alton College with the help and guidance of two inspiring lecturers, Steve McCormack and Steve Goater, who provided their own style of tuition. Along with Dad, both helped me create my finest engineering project — a bright green half Volkswagen Beetle trailer. It matched the very 1990s snot-coloured car everyone knew me for at the time.

The expectation of university loomed large over me during those final few months at Alton. I'd had my fill of formal learning and more than anything wanted to get out into the real world, but I decided to risk it all with one final attempt at educating myself to a reasonable level. University, after all, is about proving you can apply yourself — for a fixed period of time. Apparently it's something employers find attractive. Many years before, Mr Barton had declared my chances weren't good. It's amazing how long such slights can stick with you.

The practical side of engineering was proving to be where my aptitude lay. I was good at pulling things apart and almost as good at putting them back together, bar a mystery screw or bolt here and there. I enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree in Automotive Systems Engineering at Kingston University and spent my first year living in student digs, my first taste of what life was like living away from home.

It didn't last long, but not because I didn't enjoy it. I was playing more and more hockey for my Hampshire-based teams, picking up a stick almost every day. Back then I considered my commitments to my chosen sport more important than being part of university life. I look back now and wonder whether I'd have done a little better at university if I'd actually stayed there and given it my all.

The pressure was building from all sides during my final year at Kingston. My course was becoming more analytical, requiring total application, but I just wanted to play hockey down in Hampshire. Driving 50 miles a day up and down one of the UK's most congested roads probably didn't help my sanity.

One morning I cracked. I walked out to my car to start the long drive to London, but then stopped and broke down. I sat on the driveway with my head in my hands, sobbing uncontrollably. The massive pressure of my final year had become too much. I was convinced I was doomed to failure. Mum spotted me from inside the house and rushed out.

‘Ben, what on earth's wrong?’

‘I just don't know why I'm doing this course. I'm no good at it and I've no idea what I want to do after uni!’ I blubbered, tears rolling down my cheeks.

As usual, she was ready with good maternal advice: ‘If you can just get through the next couple of months, apply yourself as best you can and get any sort of grade, we'll be massively proud of you. Then you've got the entire summer to decide what you want to do.’ It was a reassuring and practical take on my mountain of a problem.

She made ‘getting through’ sound so easy, but I knew I had some serious work to do to have any chance of even scraping a second-class degree — a goal that had sounded so easy two years earlier.

I worked furiously hard over the next few weeks. The fact that it was the end of the hockey season helped, as it meant I could concentrate fully on the task without the distractions of my favourite sport. I became a social hermit for a m...