Now the New Year is upon us we wanted to reflect about the Explorer Programme we have been heading up for the past year and a half.

The beginning of 2009 saw Martin, Romy and Isla take part in placements including working in St Margaret’s Vineyard and the Melbourne Cricket Ground! (There were a lot of jealous men in the office around that time). After earning their stripes, they had a two week holiday on behalf of STA Travel. Isn’t that nice?

Moving forwards we saw the start of our monthly meet ups, which started small but filled up pretty soon. We had our die hard regulars who would never miss out on a VB, fajita or a good old Spanish game including as Marianne, Alice, Dylan and Alex, and then our one timers who would come and go but always leave with a smile.

September saw us go around the world for one evening due to STA Travel getting a bit old and hitting the big 3-0. Boy, that was a fun night.

All this time, our amazing STA Explorers have been blogging, tweeting, vlogging and capturing their travelling adventures and experiences with STA Travel.

Oh, and to top it all off… the first STA travelbuzz baby is on it’s way! A massive congratulations to The Warburton’s. That baby will be one hell of a nomad!

We would love to know your experiences being an STA Explorer, tweet Cam and give her some love.

Hitchhiking may immediately set of alarm bells for some, especially those familiar with the work of Rutger Hauer. However, we’ve met a few individuals, including former Lonely Planet writer Robert Strauss, who reckon it’s great. Also among these is Dylan, or the Travelling Editor to give him is Twitter name. Sad at the belief that it is becoming ‘a lost art’, he’s put together his top tips on hitchhiking,

“Tested and road-proof, here’s my version of ten nudge-nudge-wink-wink’s on how to not only have a successful hitchhike, but also a emotionally and spiritually satisfying one.”

The tips are great fare for anyone tempted by getting from ‘here’ to ‘there’ by standing roadside and sticking up a thumb. I think my favourite tip among Dylan’s pearls of wisdom is ‘Minimal Planning’. He makes hitchhiking sound so simple, and maybe it is,

“You begin from origin A and you end up in destination B. Sweet as. Now drop the fretting, stop scrawling red lines all over your map and take yourself to spot A.”

Apparently the unpredictability is what it is all about. So what you waiting for, read Dyl’s tips and see where you can get to for free. Paul Smith, the Twitchhiker, got from Newcastle to New Zealand no less! It’s all quite exciting - maybe we should do a STA travelbuzz hitchhike? If you fancy giving it a go be sensible, stay safe and make the world your playground.

STA Explorer and former Earn Your Striper Martin recently updated his photostream with images from Kununurra and has now added posts on how he found himself there and what he got up to.

After a few days ‘blagging’ turned into a couple of weeks, Martin found himself needing to find a job. Being a bit of vino expert and all round good guy, this didn’t prove too difficult with him landing a job as a rep for a wine company. Sadly though it was only a few hours a day,

“The work was not too bad and the only really main downside was that I would only work for 3 – 4 hours a day.

During the following week I saw a job working in a restaurant in somewhere called Kununurra in the job shop after chatting with the girl working there. She said if I was looking for farm work this would at least leave me in the right place to find a job. The town of Kununurra was created due to the damming of the Ord River in the 1960’s and the creation of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme.”

What does Martin think of Kununurra, is he making it as a farm-hand, how’s he finding the Ord River Irrigation Scheme? Click through to find out…

You can’t keep a good traveller down it seems, and hot on the heels of excitement and adventure, STA favourite Romy Khaiba has picked on Alice Springs as his latest destination – and is headed there all full speed thanks to a ‘campervan relocation’ scheme.

“Looking at the details, the price is amazing, we would get a $160 fuel allowance and have four days to get to Alice Springs, enough time to stop off at Uluru on the way, quality!!”

However, and despite having to put down a terrifying $1,000 bond as security for the van (be careful Romy), and having been fed a particularly poor Chinese, there was still time for one last notable Adelaide highlight….

“Off to bed after watching an amazing programme with an Ozzie lad called Josh. It’s called “The Man Show”, BRILLIANT!!!”

And in taking the said walk on the wild side Isla poses a few questions for her discerning readers in her latest update.

There are three questions, the answer to each being slightly more surprising than one may initially think. As a bench mark, young Matthew, who you will find in the hallowed halls of STA Travelbuzz’s about section, floundered on all fronts scoring a shocking zero. He even suggested Koala’s as the answer to,

“Q. 2 What animal is most likely to kill you in Australia?”

I think he was joking as this arrived in the wake of more sensible, yet inaccurate, attempts to answer wisely.

Anyway the mini-pop quiz is accompanied by two YouTube vids of that ‘oh-so-dangerous species’ koala (thanks Matt) and the art of wallaby feeding performed by Isla herself.

Also there is a slide show of these images documenting the Earn Your Stripes challenge of snapping wildlife, including dinosaurs.

All in all it’s great stuff. Head over and enjoy (and yes this post title prompted a Lou reed and Tribe Called Quest playlist for Friday afternoon).

The end is in sight for the Melbourne leg of our Earn Your Striper’s tour through antipodean climes, and after a farewell drink in far more European surroundings they were off.

“Technically outdoors with fencing and a corrugated ‘roof.’ There are also plants everywhere and graffiti. I was just trying to work out what it reminded me of when Romy goes, “It’s a bit like an Amsterdam coffee shop, innit?” Spot on, Romy! Spot on.”

Romy felt moved to comment on the agreeable travel arrangements, and despite an incident with an over-zealous sniffer dog, all went swimmingly.

“Tiger airlines are a good airline, cheap and good service, leg room not too bad and I made it alive, what more could you want?”

Updates from Perth on the way… It all sounds like it’s rather nice at the moment though…

“Got into our latest hostel, Billabong which is just on the edge of Northbridge so not to bad, nice 4 bed dorm with on-suite,”

After meeting up in Melbourne, our ‘stripers’ used their newly acquired free time to journey to the Wilsons Promontory National Park in Victoria. Martin and Romy set the pace during the climb up Mt. Oberon and as Martin says they were the first climbers to take in the spectacular scenery.

“[We] ended up arriving a good 15 minutes before anyone else, so sat up on the top eating lunch and looking at the great views”

Unfortunately on the way down the heavens opened, and oddly enough, due to their altitude the boys got a drenching from inside the cloud.

“We got rained on to start with from within the cloud as we were up at the same height as it, a new experience for Romy who had not been in a cloud before.”

For more on the climb, and to find out where ‘Squeaky Beach’ gets its name from, head over to Martin’s Blog.