My Story - Part 1
Not many people go through their teenage years dreaming to themselves about being a waiter. I know I didn’t, of course I would have the usual fantasies of race car driver, rock star but the only thing that really came close to being anywhere near reality was as a tour guide with my own company specialising in skiing tours around the South Island of New Zealand.
So with no race car contracts on the horizon and the rock star thing not really working out (it’s amazing how levelling the crowd in a karaoke bar can be), the idea of a working holiday began to float to the surface. Growing up in New Zealand you have two choices; head to England, buy a Kombi van, and tour Europe, or make your way across to Australia, pick up a Ford Falcon with a straight 6 under the hood and drive around the country working in pubs and clubs………….. I chose the latter.
Before stuffing my belongings in my back pack and heading across the Tasman I decided I would brush up on my bartending technique. Of course I’d tended bar before, everyone’s opened a beer and poured a few drinks at a family gathering, and of course I knew plenty about drinking, many of my friends were students and Dunedin has a great student drinking culture (in fact I could show Andrew Symonds a trick or two). So as far as I was concerned I was good to go; or was I?
After offering my time to the local rugby club so I could add to my repertoire of competent bar keeping skills, I soon realised, as I had back in that karaoke bar, that just because you’ve listened to a song a thousand times doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to get up on stage and belt it out to the crowds approval.
Unperturbed, with bags already packed, and plane ticket purchased, before I knew what was going on, I was at the airport my farewell party in tow. This was it, a new start, the start of starts, it was about then when my brain started firing a series of strange questions at me; was Australia going to embrace their newest fresh faced bartender who wasn’t able to pronounce his vowels correctly? Was I indeed going to be a Ford man or would I stray to Holden? Would the plane make it over the Southern Alps? If not were there any soccer players on board? Then as we taxied down the runway my stomach lurched and my heart paused mid beat, the big question had just arrived, what the hell have I just done…
