 I am living in Vanuatu, flying for a little charter company, and I just love it out here. It's brilliant. There is absolutely no such thing as a typical day. You know, one day I'm flying the Prime Minister, the next day I'm taking tourists flying over, looking at lava inside a volcano, dodging the lava bombs as we go, and then another day after that I'm delivering tents and tarps. We first heard about COVID in January, February, and slowly the tourists started dropping off, and then all of a sudden I'm sitting in a pub with a mate and we're the only ones here because everyone else has gone home. So in March the government locked down the whole country, all borders were closed and we didn't know what was happening. There was so much uncertainty. We were all thinking, oh well it must be here, it must be here because it's everywhere else, and everyone was getting a little bit scared. It did cross my mind thinking, oh it's a bit risky staying here if the hospitals will easily be overrun with cases if it comes in. But I was optimistic at the time because we still hadn't had any confirmed cases. Yeah, while we were in lockdown the only planes that could fly were actually ours to our nearest country New Caledonia because Vanuatu didn't have any coronavirus testing kits so we had to deliver samples to New Caledonia. And then all of a sudden the cyclone hit, it completely wiped out the northern half of the whole country basically. So as soon as the cyclone happened I thought, okay I have to stay, I have to do this job. When we rocked up the next day after the cyclone, you know there were power lines all over the roads, there were trees falling down, every single roof that we flew over had been ripped off and the water was cut off, electricity was cut off, food people didn't know if they had enough. So the response plant, it had to be immediate. The restrictions lifted immediately and we could send as many aid flights as we could so straight up first day in we were doing surveys flying around every single island looking for villages that looked extra hard done by it and then from there we were giving the information to the helicopters who could then deliver more aid to the highlands and places that were inaccessible by a fixed wing aircraft. A lot of people are really against the whole idea of foreign aid and helping people that aren't our own but it's all about mateship and helping your neighbours. It's helping our whole community in that if Vanuatu can bring themselves up to their feet then that helps Australia and I hadn't really thought about these things. I had no idea when I came out here I didn't really know anything about foreign diplomacy or foreign affairs so yeah it totally changed my perception on life and what it is to be an Australian. I go through phases I guess everyone else does too where sometimes I think yes I'm in the best place in the world to ride this out, you know one of the last countries that doesn't have coronavirus and I've still got a job and I'm still flying and I can still do all these things and came out with my friends here but I miss my family so much. I'm sad that I miss all of these big milestones you know cousins are getting married having babies and here's just me living my little life out here living above a pub in Vanuatu. I came out here for a challenge and an adventure and I didn't really understand what those things meant and now that I'm here and I get to see these amazing things and do what I can to help these communities it's taught me that there's more to life than just airplanes and Instagram. You know the planes might be small and rickety but it's way more fun than being a jet jockey.