RN: The first question we have for you, out of 30,000 applicants we heard, that you were chosen for this job. We're wondering what made you apply for the job in the first place?
BS: Um, I had just got back from a year traveling around Africa. I had organized the charity expedition and when I got back on Januay the 1st, I hadn't got any work. And this position came up in the paper about ten days after. And a friend of mine actually cut out a piece from the newspaper and said, "Look, Ben, why don't you go for this job? It looks like the sort of thing you'd be good at." So I just put the application video in.
RN: Oh gosh, great. Well, congratulations.
BS: Yeah, well, here we go. It was down to them really.
RN: Yeah great. And how's it going? I mean, what is it like? Are you just blown away?
BS: It's a very very lovely thing to be doing. And everyday has got lots of new experiences in it. This is my first day off in about two weeks, so it's been very very busy. And it's just organized. Everything is organized for me. I have to sort of turn up at the airport and I'm off to the next place or off to the next boat and then we go to the next island. So, it's very very beautiful. I have lots of great experiences, but it's very very busy as well. It's one of the things I don't think anyone knew quite how busy it was going to be. And there is literally something to do almost every day.
RN: And so the job part of your job is this busyness and then is there some duty that you...I mean...? Tell us about your duty.
BS: Yes, very much so. Once I've had the chance to have all these lovely experiences, I've then really got to try and put down how good they were, how bad they were and what I enjoyed about them and really try and just give people some information on what you know the best bits of these islands that I go to are, so that people around the world have a chance to see it and think "I'd like to do that." and then obviously book their holiday, ideally.
RN: Hmm, right. I noticed one of the ways you do that is through a blog. Are there other, other ways that you let people know about the island?
BS: I just try and keep stuff up to date on the Twitter account as well. It's just something that because I'm on the island, there isn't reception everywhere so its very difficult to keep it updated a daily basis. So I sort of do that every three or four days and then just try and you know take lots of photos do lots of...uh, I write up my blog virtually every evening when I sit down and I've had a good day I write down what I've been doing. I just try to keep it as fresh as possible and just trying to sort of report it honestly in my words, and trying to make it creative, make it nice and poetic almost, so that people get a real understanding of all the different senses that I'm being excited with over here.
RN: Oh, great. Well, I read part of the poetry was your interesting dinner a few nights ago at the ..., Lizard Island.
BS: Well, we're down actually on the beach itself.
RN: Oh ok. And so what did they serve you there?
BS: Oh, we've had a whole range of different things. We were in Lizard for three days. Just some beautiful, beautiful seafood, as much as anything. I love the ocean and I love seafood and just being able to sort of live so close obviously, there's a good harvest comes from the ocean. And it's different prawns and barramundi or red snapper and just the different ways that all the chefs prepare them because each of the resorts we come are all very very nice, but we get fed the most beautiful food and it's almost every single day. Sometimes it's nice just to sort of have an apple or scrambled eggs on toast as opposed to all these massively extravagant meals. So I hope that my fitness allows me to keep about the same size as I am now, because otherwise I'm going to go home extremely fat.
RN: Well, maybe that's ok. Coming to our next question. As contrast to the best job in the world, is there anything you know, negative about it?
BS: I think the only thing about it is it is so busy. I mean lots of people imagined it to be sitting on this balcony that I'm sitting on at the moment, relaxing, sitting in a hammock, not doing much you know. But it is genuinely an extremely busy job and it's just working as an ambassador. So that's the only thing. I'm just trying to find some sort of spare time to sit down and even write response emails to my family and friends in the UK. Just trying to get that done is the busy part at the moment. So, I suppose that's the only. It's not a downside but it's just me trying to find time to do it, that's all.
RN: If it's possible to pick one best part, could you...?
BS: I love, I'm starting to love diving. I only learnt a year ago. Having the opportunity to dive at the Cod Hole which is a very famous dive site on the Barrier Reef was just such an amazing experience. Bre and I went down there for our second dive together and the fish that we saw were they were 100 kg cod, and they are enormous these things and they get, you can feed them by hand down there. Just that experience itself is just overwhelming because it's like an aquarium.It's like being in a bath, the water is so clear and warm. And so that was the underwater experience was the best part so far.
RN: Oh great great. Now I'm hearing kind of an Australian accent from you. Are you...?
BS: No, I lived in South Africa for a few years. And I've got a slight South African sort of twang to my voice, I suppose. But it's just lots of different travels. I haven't really stuck with an English accent its just sort of over ten to twelve years of Africa travels, I think everything slightly changed, that's all.
RN: Ok, I see. Now we of course are in Japan and our magazine readers are Japanese, most of them studying English, but you know the Japanese love to travel. So what would you say to people who might want to come to your place down there? What's the most attractive thing for Japanese?
BS: Well, you've got a heck of a lot of Japanese that travel here anyway. Over the last few days I've been down on Green Island and there were lots and lots of them down there, all really having a good time. I think one of the things that you know the Japanese do like to do is travel en masse and use lots of their technology, lots of their cameras and one of the amazing things that we've done over the last few days is actually go down on something called Sea Walker. If you can't dive, it's a really really really good introduction to getting right down under the water. It's like almost like a space man's helmet that you put on and its got an air line fed into the back of it. It's like a diving bell. And we went down and did that. And that for people that are maybe a bit scared of the water, or don't have a diving certificate, that sort of thing is a real good introduction because it almost just allows you to go and do it with no qualifications, no special skills.
RN: So individually, everybody has a hat, I mean a big globe over their heads?
BS: Exactly, yeah, exactly. Everyone's got a big fish bowl with a pipe in the back of it and the basic way, it's a fish bowl with a pipe in and you get to go right down into the floor of the ocean, about five meters down and all the fish are right around you and you can go down in the coral reef. And it's just one of these things that make it easy to come and do this underwater exploring part and it's really what the Barrier Reef is all about. It's just the beauty. Yes, the islands are amazing and above the water the sun is out all the time, but once you get underwater that is another world to explore altogether and it's somewhere that not enough people go to look at. So people need to come out and see that bit of it and that's the good good bit.
RN: Oh great. Well, thank you. That sounds ... I wanna go!
BS: Yeah, well, it's easy to do! Ha ha ha. ...