By JOLENE OGLE
SUN, surf and local produce provided the perfect welcome to Noosa for the five lucky winners of the Ultimate Gap Year competition.
Run by Trade and Investment Queensland, the Ultimate Gap Year offers five international students the chance to visit parts of Queensland, stopping at major tourism centres, including Noosa.
The five international students, Ayane Hirata, Ji-yeon Choi, Vera Hsu, Juan Camilo Leal and Amanda Gonçalves, were among 300 entrants of the Facebook competition and arrived in Noosa on Saturday to be officially welcomed by Member for Noosa Glen Elmes and Tourism Noosa GM Damien Massingham at a breakfast on Noosa Main Beach.
The competition will take the winners throughout Queensland where they will learn and practice English, before beginning a six-month internship in Brisbane.
Trade and Investment Queensland principal trade officer Patrick Hafenstein said the Ultimate Gap Year was a great chance to capitalise on one of Australia’s major exports; international education.
“International education is the fourth largest export for Australia and the second largest service export,” he said.
“There were 86,000 international students last year in Queensland.
“It’s a big boost to the economy, just behind tourism.”
Tourism Noosa GM Damien Massingham said the Ultimate Gap Year is a great initiative because “youth are the way forward in getting messages out”.
“For young people, it’s just a given they use social media to communicate,” he said.
“So being here and really living and breathing Noosa over the next four weeks will be fantastic, not just for the students, but for our community and our economy.
“Those messages they’ll send throughout the world… with those images and experiences that they’re having will… sell the fact we have a beautiful place and help build our numbers in the international market in the future.”
Member for Noosa Glen Elmes said the initiative is another step in building education in our state.
“Education and health are two things we really have to work on,” he said.
The five students will spend four weeks in Noosa learning English and taking part in surfing lessons, before heading to Cairns, the Gold Coast and then Brisbane to begin their internship.
