Oh Laura, what will we do without your zest for memory making, questionable gingerness and irrefutable business savviness.  We are continually appreciative of all our volunteers and their willingness to make this project their own.  Laura was no different, immediately she was creating procedures and calling on businesses for cargo.  Thank you for everything and you better comeback… and we mean that in a passive aggressive way.

By Laura Bryne

What can I say?????? TIMBERCOAST completely blew all my expectations out of the water!!!

I had been travelling in Europe for a few weeks and decided that I would give Workaway a go, I knew I wanted to go to Germany at some point so that was my search criteria. I soon saw an opportunity that had a picture of a ship, I had always liked the ocean and sailing so I figured it might be the one for me! I contacted TIMBERCOAST and explained that I was an accountant. They said they were in need of some help with their accounts and we soon arranged dates for me to come.

The day I arrived I had no idea what to expect. I was brought to the wharf and taken on a tour, including my lovely new office (a shipping container). My last job was for a stevedoring company so I was laughing to myself that I would never get away from a working life in a container! The ship was just a shell, completely stripped on the dry dock and being welded and painted, it was hard to believe THIS was going to get a crew all the way to Australia!

I met all the volunteers involved with the project and soon realised these were my kind of people! They were from all corners of the world from Canada to Israel, travelling, exploring and in search of new random experiences….. just like me. They were all very friendly from the outset, unfortunately though the practical joke that they tried playing on me failed as there was only one committed prankster the rest forgot the plan!

The house that we were staying in was what really made my TIMBERCOAST experience fantastic! It was an old boarding house for misunderstood Swiss teens back in the day. There were around 10 bedrooms, a theatre room, music room, games room, computer room and even a spooky cellar, over three floors. This meant that all the volunteers were hanging out after work together having beers, going to the beach, cooking , eating, singing and even constructing make shift hot tubs with built in fires! We also had a fantastic weekend camping at a small festival that our Boatswain, Peter, invited us to, we danced like insane people until 2 am and even crashed the stage when the last band was playing.

The day to day work for me was in the office, initially I was supposed to sort out the accounts but given circumstances beyond our control and the time different to the company account in Australia it wasn’t a goer. As such my role evolved into the Global Social Media Representative HAHAHHA I had never done much online marketing so it was a great experience. I also helped out with a few other bits and bobs that had been on the to-do list for a while. It was very rewarding to help move the project forward.

I enjoyed myself so much at TIMBERCOAST…. I will be coming back!!! As most people seem to do on this project