Who Am I?

A little about little old me...

Hello (or is G'Day a little more appropriate given my location), my name is Fiona and I'm delighted you've decided to give my little old blog a read.

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This is my first taste of university, I had a bit of a stumble after leaving school, and decided to forgo university for at least a year (at the time I didn't realise it would turn into 20 years, but oh well, I'm here now). Do I regret the decision, no, I have had many wonderful experiences, and gained a lot of work experience which I hope will help me succeed in my path to a Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management).

I was born in Winton some 36 years ago, I have lived and worked on/off most of my life in the Central West, living in Winton, Longreach and now Barcaldine. I have escaped the area a few times, experiencing the joys of boarding school in Toowoomba and Charters Towers, lived/worked in the Sunshine Coast, Uluru and Millmerran.

For the first few years I had a few meaningless jobs, housekeeping out at Uluru being one of them (job meaningless, location amazing), before moving home and starting as a console operator for BP, during my time with them I worked my way up to managing sites by the age of 21, small ones to start with then larger ones, and then training fellow managers. The call of home got too loud and decided to venture home and completely change my career, the foray into Tourism.

I started as a mature-age trainee (25!, but still mature apparently), with the Waltzing Matilda Centre, this position gave me opportunity to learn some much about my community, the area in which I was born and grown up in, which I was so ignorant to (so true that we don't realise what's in our backyard), after a few years I got offered a position with a tour company in Longreach.

Now I didn't realise what I was getting myself into with that one, I started as just general office person, helping with tours and general office duties, within 10-months I had been given the title of Office/Operations Manager, in the beginning the team consisted on 15 employees (seasonally), by the end of my tenure, we had a seasonal staff of about 45. When I first started, we had an annual turnaround of approximately 1 million, when I left this had grown to over 8 million. I'm extremely proud of my achievements with them, but I didn't have any work/life balance.

I decided to take a little time off and do a little travelling, which I hadn't really had the opportunity to do so, because I always seemed to be working. I had a break from working for about 5 months in the end, travelling around Europe and having Christmas in New York (magical).

When I finally got home I wasn't in a rush to get a job, I had a brief stint as a Team Leader for Suncorp, before moving onto Barcaldine to work in State Government in finance support role, which then lead to my current position as a Human Resource Advisor. My previous experience opened the door for this opportunity, I have enjoyed the challenge and experience so much, I wanted to further my knowledge in this discipline, thus bringing me to my current journey with CQ University.

When I'm not working (I now have a better work/life balance, just in case you were wondering), I love baking, musicals (I have seen over 25, in particular Wicked, which I've seen 6 times, on 3 different continents), massive fan of RuPaul's Drag Race, running (the image on my home page was taken on a sunset run) and being a smart arse.

I'm scared about the journey ahead, I've never been the best student, but I know that with support I can achieve this.