so let me begin.

Late evening on Sunday the 2^nd august 09 I joined the queue outside STA travel, Southampton, in a bid to win one of the one hundred and fifty ‘£10 POM’ tickets being released across the UK. I queued up for four unexpectedly fabulous days and three strangely compelling & comical nights, and then on wednesday 5^th august, became the fourteenth of fifteen £10 POMS at our store!

Three weeks later on the morning of 24^th august 09, I was checked in, boarded, up in the air & sipping on baileys on my way to Melbourne, Australia. I was welcomed down under at the airport by my two mates met previously when travelling in Oz, Bubsy and Junior, and was home with a cuppa, watching Flight of the Conchords before you could say home sweeeeet home.

As I am a recent graduate in fashion photography (november 08) I decided to dedicate this time in Melbourne to working my way into the creative photographic industry. This will be the first time I have given all my time to my favoured subject and am ready to see how much I can work & learn in this fresh, vibrant & artsy city.

So let me begin… the first couple of weeks when I arrived, firstly involved buying warmer layers, it was bloody cold! After wrapping up a little more, I got set on emailing my CV and story to as many photographers/ magazines/ galleries/ art spaces & organisations as possible, this was a long process, and at times did fancy throwing the mac out of the window from being sick of the sight of its presence. Eventually though after persistence, I started to get responses back, and found everyone incredibly helpful, even if, they had no work opportunities available for me themselves. Their emails gave me a lot a lot of tips, info and links to others in the industry whom they thought might have something I could be interested in...this would lead me onto emailing others and then getting further connections through them and so on! I call this the ‘tripleN’ (network, network, network) stage of my journey. Also during this time I was getting to grips with living in a new place, getting lost on trams & discovering new areas, falling in love with the city CBD and its unique little alleys that lead to hidden delights amongst the metropolis grid, having dinners with friends from my earlier travels, walks along the beach in the sunshine and essentially trying to create a familiar living impression for this pommy the other side of the world.