Our Experience
My friend Laura and I decided to come travelling for a year in November 2018. Just like a lot of backpackers from around the world, we came to Australia for a unique and life changing experience.
Of course that’s exactly what we got! But our most memorable and favourite moments in the beautiful country that is Australia were thanks to Drop Bear Adventures and every single person we met while volunteering for them on K’gari (Fraser Island).
We both decided to write this to share our experience with everyone and hope this will motivate you to want to travel and be a part of the Drop Bear family.
Meeting The Team
We applied for this volunteer work while we were still in the Gold Coast, just a couple of hours after applying we got a call from Hana aka Mumma Bear.
Hana explained to us what we would be doing and how they would look after us while we were there. We didn’t think twice and drove our car to the Sunshine Coast to get to the island and meet her and the rest of the team as soon as possible, we were very excited about this new adventure we were about to go on.
Arrived in Noosa we got to meet Lauren who was incredibly helpful and explained to us how they organised everything for us to get on the island. We then left with one of the tours the next morning.
After meeting Hana and Mark (Mumma and Poppa Bear) and Jen and Luke who are the incredible managers on the island at the moment; we already knew we would be staying longer than the 4weeks that we were expected to do.
They are amazing people we consider friends for life. We truly felt part of the family.
Why Volunteer?
Being a volunteer for Drop Bear Adventures for 3months was the best thing we did throughout our time in Australia; we met the best people and had the best time.
While living on the island it’s very important for everyone to feel like a family and help each other out. The work isn’t hard but it consists in the team helping each other out just to make everyones lives easier and more fun!
We always want to help each other out so we can all go exploring the island together, no one stays behind.
Our favourite days were without a doubt are Sunday family fun days, as soon as everyone was ready we would go somewhere new on the island and spend the day together just having fun. Usually we would go back have a beer and make dinner together, it could have ended up on the bean bags in front of a movie all together or sometimes just having a fire in the garden with a couple more beers, some music and a lot of dancing!
We were also incredibly lucky to have met the Butchella people, the First Nation’s People of the island. They taught us so much about their culture and traditions.
We were all very grateful and respected them immensely for their knowledge about the island that they so kindly shared with us.
It was a very unique moment for us all, a moment we will never forget.
Eco-Friendly
Imagine waking up in paradise, only the sounds of waves lapping the sands and the wildlife is all you’ll hear whilst watching the sunrise (if you’re an early riser). It really is like living in a dream which is why we need to help save our planet.
We learnt so much about how to live the eco friendly way and how we could all make a difference to save our planet, our home and our future. Before coming to the island we didn’t understand much about how we could make a difference. I hope that one day the things that Hana taught us could be taught to everyone and we could all unite together to stop climate change.
Momma and Poppa Bear are incredibly inspiring and shared their passion with all of us. They showed us how to be environmentally sustainable and we definitely feel like we have all become experts!
Drop Bear Adventures are completely plastic free and only use planet friendly products. While living on the island we are all very careful with our food waste, the menu for all of the guests is set up especially to reduce waste and of course they have their own compost for all of the food scraps. One of the volunteers Sjoerd absolutely loved taking care of his compost!
They also organise a big beach clean up every year in October but every time we have time to we love going to the beach to do our own little clean up, every little helps!
Join The Family
If you want to be living the dream, waking up on an island, spending time with some of the coolest people on the planet and learning something different and always more interesting everyday; I don’t think you should even think anymore; go volunteer for Drop Bear Adventures!
Live your best life!
