Ben Southall
Brit Ben Southall is three weeks into his six months on the Best Job in the World – as island caretaker for Queensland’s Whitsundays. Chatting to Tumbrella from his $4million pad on Hamilton Island, Ben tells us about the job which he had to beat 34,000 applicants to get.
Hi Ben, how’s it going?
It’s going really good. Today is a nice day off. Well, it’s scheduled as a day off, but that means just three media interviews.
Do you have a typical day?
There isn’t a typical day. It’s out on the road as such, usually flying to somewhere or getting a cruise to somewhere, stay at a resort, find out what goes on behind the scenes, find out some of the nice things to do there, like snorkelling or diving. It’s just being immersed in what each different island has and then spending half the night trying to do a blog about it.
Not as relaxed as you first thought then?
It’s an extreme working holiday, it’s a very different thing to how everybody projected it initially, that it was going to be a hammock and a desert island and a beach and do nothing apart from a weekly blog. It’s a lot more than that. I’m happy with that because I’m a busy person. I think six months on a desert island would have been quite numbing.
What have been the highlights so far?
I’ve just come off three days sailing. That was incredible. All round the Whitsundays. I worked in the sailing field for about 10 years, doing the hospitality side, so now it’s nice to be on the other side and enjoy it and learn to sail. That’s really been the best bit. Plus the diving up at Cod Hole, on Lizard Island, was pretty special. There aren’t any lowlights at the moment, it’s just continual good stuff.
How’s your flash house treating you?
I’m talking to you now from the balcony. There’s a kookaburra sat in the tree watching me, I’m looking out over a little yacht cruising up the Whitsunday Passage. There’s a little turtle that we’ve got that sits almost directly under our balcony. It’s lovely. Sorry.
Ben Southall and girlfriend Bre Watkins
And your girlfriend Bre is with you as well. Seems to me like she’s the one with the perfect job…
Yeah, Bre’s loving it because she doesn’t have to do vast amounts. She can sit here and just enjoy it and soak it up, and so she should. She was travelling for three years with her family before this and only got back to Canada in March. Then she had a couple of months over there training to be a stunt girl and now she’s back over in Australia with me.
Did it surprise you how global the whole campaign went?
It was totally mental to be honest. I sat down with Bre one cold morning in February when we decided to do the video. I put it in and didn’t think anything about it for another month. And then this email came through saying “you’re in the final 50”. That blew us away. Just to get to that stage was good, but then your ears prick and you think, “maybe I do stand a chance here”. When I got to the final 16 I just decided to go there, to not prepare, just say, “this is who I am, if you want me great, if you don’t, thank you very much I’ll go off home”.
Was it really competitive in the final?
Strange enough I don’t think it was. We’d had two days to get to know each other before all the media attention picked up. Everybody had been thrown in at the deep end. It was only when we first got off the plane at Hamilton Island and there were about 60 different film crews there, all of a sudden everybody thought, “Christ, what have we got ourselves involved in?” Everybody almost huddled together, like a bait ball with all the sharks swimming around the outside and us in the centre. I think everyone took a bit of solace from each other and pulled together. Everyone’s kept in touch afterwards. In everyone’s eyes it was just an opportunity and if it didn’t happen you carried on doing your own thing.
According to Wikipedia you’re an ostrich rider…
You’re joking, I’m on Wikipedia? No way, I’ve hit the heady heights, my God! That was an experience me and Bre had in South Africa last year. It was one of the most amusing three days. We were challenging each other for extreme stuff to do. I don’t like heights and Bre doesn’t like sharks, so we went and did the world’s highest bungy jump and then I took her cage diving with great whites. Then we decided to do something calmer and went to an ostrich farm. They’re awesome birds, huge sort of prehistoric chickens that are great fun. I’ve never wet myself laughing so much, watching other people do it, so I had to have a go myself. It’s side-splittingly good fun.
Ben Southall – pretty happy
There have been a couple of quite unfair news stories about you. How do you feel about them?
I think they’re almost fillers in the newspaper. There are a few negative things that come through. A few of the comments that come through on the blog are from people who didn’t get the position and feel maybe they should have done. As long as I keep working as I am at the moment, I don’t think anyone’s got a problem with it.
Do you think it’s journalists taking advantage of jealousy of your job?
Of course it is, and the power of the internet makes it so easy for them. Anyone can put up a comment and it takes no effort, it takes 10 seconds. You press post and it’s up there. You get three or four of those in a row, a journalist reads them and all of a sudden he’s got a story. It’s just negative journalism that is feeding on very little as far as I’m concerned. It gets to you initially but then you just think, come on.
Okay then Ben, time to earn your keep. Why should we bother coming to the Whitsundays?
Coming from the UK, I see it as the all-round summer. The fact that a day like today, it’s the thick of winter, but it’s probably 28°C at the moment. I’m looking out on the crystal clear ocean, in the distance I’ve got three islands, all of them pretty unexplored, all of them just there for people to go and sail around, dive off and experience. It’s just a massive playground, that’s what the Whitsundays come down to. It’s an aquatic playground. Plus it’s got the reef on its doorstep, which is pretty damn special.
