We’re working with STA Travel UK and the Very Gold Coast tourist board to create a travel guide about what can be done when visiting Australia’s Gold Coast. The guide, Experience the Gold Coast, will take the form of a wiki and be made up entirely of user generated content. And that’s where you come in.

It will be entirely in your hands, we’ll set it up with a few categories to start off, beaches, entertainment, sights – that sort of thing, and then it’s up to you. Whether you want to share knowledge on surfers paradise or the best place to see live music, you can. The little know haunts and the world famous hang outs, we want it all. You will be able to add and share all sorts of content, from text and photos to video and podcasts.

The aim is to make the wiki a living, fluid entity that’ll take whatever shape you give it, all the while providing visitors to the Gold Coast with best type of guide, one created by the people who have been there and know it. Whether you want to create information from scratch, add or comment on what’s already there or share links to relevant content you know of or have created you’ll be able to.

We’ll be sharing the Experience the Gold Coast wiki details soon and hope you’ll want to be involved. Below are some images that should get you thinking – be sure to head through to the associated Flickr pages for more of the same.

Alyce_M

Arodsf

Chris_Hoopmann

Geoffsnaps

Jiggs_images

JTRphotography

Pondspider

Singareev

Stromfa11

Wadijn

If you would like to be involved in contributing to the Experience the Gold Coast wiki, please get in touch. Either email Francisco or Cam, or if you’re on Twitter, just @statravelbuzz… look forward to hearing from you. #ExperienceGC

Alice has posted on the opportunity to travel for free that is STA Travel’s World Traveller Internship.

Our STA Explorer Alice in down-underland was fortunate enough to benefit from a previous STA Travel offer – she was £10 Pom 2009. Thinking travelling to Aus for a tenner was a pretty amazing deal, she believes that the chance to become STA Travel’s World Traveller Intern might be even better,

“I wasn’t sure that STA could do it… sending 150 people to Australia for only 10 pounds was pretty incredible (especially as I managed to grab myself a ticket) but they’ve outdone themselves with this new opportunity.”

Her rallying cry is stirring, even breaking down the process of applying into six very basic steps with the final one being the clincher – ‘go and experience the world’.

She’s right; it isn’t often that the chance to travel for free and see the world comes around. It’d be shame to waste it. If you’re applying let us know and tell us how it’s going. Either leave a comment below, drop us an email or @statravelbuzz. We’d love to hear how it’s going.

We’ve got a list of free things to do in Sydney this February. It’s been carefully put together by our STA Explorers Our Little Jaunt, the rather ace A and V. Since settling in to a Sydney based life the couple has been doing loads and the majority of it cost them absolutely nothing.

And, in true Explorer fashion they decided to share their findings and have set you up with an itinerary for February that is bursting at its money-saving seams,

“I have decided to give you a list of all of the free events in the main festivals this February – Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year (program here), TropFest short film festival, Sydney University O (orientation – read Freshers) week and loads of other cool little things that you need to read the local publications about.”

A also suggests that you look up Time Out Magazine, either the website or actually purchase the magazine – it’s $3.95 and will effectively save you money due to it being ‘awesome’ when finding out what’s going on.

There are a few days that are yet to feature anything, so if you know of something brilliant and free that’s going on in Sydney, get in touch with them.

TravellersPoint are looking to raise a whole lot of funds for impoverished rural communities around the world and with limited access to water, and to do so need your help.

The funds raised will be used to purchase hippo rollers,

“The hippo roller is a large drum that can hold 90 litres (24 gallons) of water and can be pushed along the ground, making it much easier to transport clean drinking water. It’s a simple technology that has the capacity to make a huge difference in places where water is scarce.”

The Hippo Roller Challenge isn’t about you handing over your cash though. TravellersPoint want your travel knowledge. They’re putting together a wiki full of contributions from people like you and as the wiki grows they’ll donate more and more hippo rollers. The land marks are character based and the first has already been reached – 15 million characters.

They’re aiming to get to 20 million characters in the guide before 31st March, which will see TravellersPoint donating 63 hippo rollers in total. All you need to get involved is on The Hippo Roller Challenge page on their site, so head over and add a contribution, whether on the latest place you visited or your favourite landmark, it all helps.