Adventure traveller wins 2008
Get Up & Go Award

Brian Eldridge is the winner of the 2008 Get Up & Go Award for Australia’s most adventurous traveller. A quiet, modest man, Brian found that when you are made redundant from your job life doesn’t always take a downward turn. He began the ‘time of his life’ with his wife as they discovered the adventure of volunteering combined with travel.

For most of Brian Eldridge’s life he has worked as a motor mechanic, including nine and a half years as a mechanic in the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in central Australia. The last eight years of his (paid) working life was as office manager of an aged care facility in Port Macquarie NSW. A restructure brought about Brian’s redundancy.

“I was almost 64 and I lost my job,” Brian says. So, rolling with the punches, Brian accepted what had happened and moved on.

“I was obliged to do two days a week volunteering to receive the Newstart Allowance. So, with my wife we began to discover the wonderful world of volunteering. We far exceeded the two day requirement and at 65 I became a committed volunteer, with my wife.”

Since then Brian and his wife Wynne have travelled and worked in NSW with Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) planting trees, weeding, doing trackwork maintenance, wetlands rehabilitation, plant surveys and more.

“We are always the ‘oldies’ and love working with international young people: gappers, tourists or volunteers like ourselves all have a story to tell. There’s invariably lots of sharing, laughter and great food to balance the hard work.”

In 2004 Brian had the wonderful experience of joining a volunteer mission building team for two weeks in Kavieng PNG. In 2005 CVA awarded Wynne and Brian with Certificates 1 in Active Volunteering – a world first and a thrill!

One of their highlights was a camping trip to Alice Springs where they joined a CVA team at Uluru. There they removed buffel grass with mattocks for two weeks.

In 2006 they headed to Hong Kong where they worked for four weeks as volunteers at Crossroads International, a charity that distributes quality used goods to needy people in many countries. While in Hong Kong they participated in poverty and refugee educational activities. They then continued on in Asia to embrace the culture of Vietnam and enjoy a holiday.

In 2007 they were on the move again as they were invited by Conservation Volunteers NZ to work in the Auckland district for a couple of weeks.

“At the age of 68 I’m enjoying my life more and more,” Brian says. “Wynne and I are having a ball. Our other passions are taking train trips and we do lots of camping in remote places. We have discovered house and farm sitting too. We are never at home, we love minding other people’s houses. In fact, our neighbours have considered selling our house,” Brian concludes.

Brian is the winner of the 2008 Get Up & Go Award for Australia’s most adventurous traveller. He has won a holiday with Designer Holidays in India. He and Wynne will fly courtesy of Thai Airways International between Australia and New Delhi. The six-day trip will include stays at magnificent Taj properties, full breakfasts daily, transfer from new Delhi Airport to hotel, sightseeing with a tour guide, first class train travel from Delhi to Agra, and a one-way flight on Indian Airlines from Jaipur to Delhi. The value of this splendid trip for two is $9830. Congratulations.

Get Up & Go Award finalist
Thomas Muller, Qld
As soon as Dr Thomas Muller turned 60 he was on his 84th dive exploring the coral depths of Lady Musgrave Island in Queensland.

He is 68 years of age now and is not slowing down. “I retired from an academic career at 64 years and decided to focus my travels with a supreme adventure goal: to experience every 10-degree-wide slice of longitude and every 10-degree-wide band of latitude. I would need to travel to the earth’s remotest destinations in order to achieve this 54-slice goal,” says Thomas.

He has journeyed to the North Pole, Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea, north-eastern Siberia, northern tip of Alaska, Southern Ocean and Ross Sea section of Antarctica, Australia’s and New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands, Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula.

But it isn’t all polar punishment. Thomas has camped in the Amazon jungle, hiked in Borneo, stayed in a Korean monastery, camped on the endless dunes of Arabia’s Empty Quarter and travelled through India.

Well done Dr Muller.