 This years overseas travel competition went out with ANOTHER bang!!! The one, the only!! The UNBEATABLE cornucopian Matty Gould has gone and done it AGAIN!!! Can anyone beat him?? Also congrats to happy facer Mark Alcorn who put in a GREAT performance and came runner up, narrowly missing out on the trip overseas. Winner Matt spent the week on an AWESOME charity interaction in the gorgeous island of Vanuatu :) Here's his top 5:
0 Comments
WHAT a WEEK!! The three musketeers decided it was time for a REUNION in snowy NORWAY!! What a place!! What a week!! This is why we LOVE to WORK AND TRAVEL, here's our top 9 :D Words cannot describe how wonderful and magical the past 6 weeks on the beautiful island of Tasmania have been! Glorious walks through the wilderness, enchanted creatures, bush doofs and festivals, inspiration, laughter, broken tents to mountain penthouses, kindness from so many beautiful souls. Massive love to our fundraising warriors who work so hard fighting the good fight and who make EVERY TRIP we take the TRIP OF A LIFETIME!! We are back on the mainland and SO excited for this next road trip, who we are gonna meet and what we gonna achieve! BEAUTIFUL WORLD!! #bangladesh #dribblingonyourself #wombats #youaretheweakestlinkgoodbye #wineglassbay #cradlemountain le Here's Our Top 12 :D Happy Faces cannot get enough of Byron Bay we just LOVE the place!! Open hearts, open minds and beautiful food! We took a surf lesson, got our yogi on, tried our hand at some Buddhist meditation and woke up every morning at the beach. How lucky are we :D :D Next stop Ballina :) Songs for this trip!!
Think sustainability, arts, and an alluring escapist counter culture. Nimbin is many things and one day just wasn't enough, Nimbin, we will be back ;)  Happy Faces love our 3 week on 1 week off rotations and this week off was the week off to end ALL week offs!! A stunning visit to the amazing K'gari Island!!! (Aka Fraser Island) Our trip was made all the better by the awesome crew at Drop Bears Adventures and our awesome guide Clint. Legends!! We caught the sunrise every morning, saw wild dingoes, learned so much about the indigenous history of the island, we loved, we laughed, we flew a private jet, mastered the boomerang, hopped huge sand-dunes and bathed in the crystal clears waters of lake Mackenzie. Massive shout out to all the crew, if Carlsberg did weeks off....next stop, Byron Bay :D :D Happy Faces always love getting a little lost in the wild, and one thing is for sure, outback kids know how to get down! :D We whizzed through Warwick, partied it up in Toowoomba, and climbed to the top of Table Top Mountain, gorgeous day, gorgeous view Next Stop WEEK OFF :D What a beautiful treat for some happy Faces at Tin Can Bay. We got up super early to see a family of wild dolphins with their babies get their morning feed at Tin Can Bay. #beautifulworld #natureatitsbest The Sunshine Coast is always a stop on any road-trip and we had a chilled week staying at the lovely Mudjimba Beach Holiday Park, right on the river. Pure beaut.
Happy Faces have been cruising the coast and making the most of the surrounds :D There's been eagle eyes in Mackay, another smasher week in Gladstone, a trip to the gorgeous Yeppoon and a wild night out at the Rockhampton Rodeo. Congrats to Bianca Olivieri who smashed our champion Matteus in a mini comp in Gladstone and won herself a free lunch at the Outlook Cafe. #LOVING LIFE :D :D
Big shout out to the lovely Helena who hooked us up with Hoyt and with a superb dance performance by the Townsville Rockpools. Helena was also kind enough to have us around for a lovely home cooked meal. #luckyducks We feel so lucky to meet so many beautiful happy people who take us into their homes and into their hearts :) Happy Faces have had a SMASHER couple of weeks in Townsville :D We've been to Jourama Falls and Hincebrooke Lookout were we spent the day bouldering, hiking and swimming in peaceful rock pools. We've also been punching out some GREAT scores for our amazing charity partners. Matteus is well on track to smash the $2500 challenge and looks like he will be winning that Trip to Indonesia too! Keep up the good work mate :D And our new guy Joey-the Machine-Chandler smashed out a whopping 7 mandates on only his third ever day fundraising!! That is a Happy Faces new start record. Massive well done mate. The future is bright :) We have to say a sad farewell to the one and only David Timmy Mattar who will be leaving us for a while to complete his regional farm work. We aren't too sad though because we know we will see you again :) The team is heading off to Magnetic Island for the Full Moon Party, then one more week in Townsville before we hit the road again :D Song of the Week:
Two exciting new incentives have been set and are underway: 1. Incentivise your way to Indonesia: A 6 week challenge which will see the top exporting fundraisers win an all expenses paid trip to Indonesia. This trip is a "money can't buy" experience and campaigners will get the opportunity to visit the Red Cross Projects in Indonesia as well as get plenty of time off for sun sand sea and excitement :D 2. 4 week challenge: A challenge which will see top quality fundraisers take home an amazing mystery prize. We are super excited and ready to give these challenges everything we've got :D  Happy Faces have had an AWESOME couple of weeks in Townsville :D We had a trip to Jourama Falls National Park and the stunning Hincebrooke Lookout which had one of the most incredible views we think we have ever seen! Check it Out! WOW! :D The team is really stepping up their game now that the challenges are in full swing. Matteus is pumping out some awesome scores punching out the 8s and 9s in a day on the regular. Brilliant work. Just one away from those Zen Tens! Now lets talk about our new guy, Joey-the-machine-Chandler who busted out a superb 7 mandates on only his third day ever fundraising! Wow!! That's a Happy Faces, new start record! Go Joey!!  Joey-the-machine-Chandler The future is bright :) Song of the week:  Huge congrats to David-Day Mattar who smashed out a new PB of 7@180 on Thursday in Innisfail.
David has been focusing on bringing genuine connection and a touch of performance art back into his pitch and has set a new goal to join the Zen Ten Club in the coming weeks. Watch the space.  Happy faces always make the most of our weeks off and what a week off it was! After working super hard on the Red Cross Campaign it was time to let our hair down and blow off some steam, and what better way to relax than at a festival, right? The event of choice was Bushweek and it was EVERYTHING we hoped it would be and SOOO much more. :D We started the drive North on Monday after a weekend of festival prep and headed on the inland route towards Cooktown. With the tunes blazing and the sun shining nothing could bring us down and there was vibes of total excitement that meant we couldn't get to the festival grounds quick enough! After a 4 and a half hour drive, the sun went down, the most incredible starry sky lit up above us and our home for the next week finally came into view. The beautiful Home Rule, far North Queensland. HELLOOOOO BUSHWEEK :D Bushweek is definitely no ordinary festival. It's more of an event, a place which gives people from all walks of life the opportunity to come together in a beautiful open space, outside the boundaries of regular society. The gathering itself is about living self sustainably, consciously and creatively. Something we at Happy Faces are ALL FOR :) The campsite itself is surrounded by pristine world heritage rain forest with two pristine lakes, and a stunning waterfall to bathe in. Music and art flow from morning to night and Happy Faces where blown away by the number of beautiful, kind and open people who made Home Rule such a special place to be. What more could you ask for? A highlight of the week was seeing the end product of communal palm weaving from which we created one of the stages, a stunning open winged bird. Special thanks to the Cool Breeze and Assem who did most of the work! Haha Check it out! We feel so lucky to have experienced Bushweek, we definitely made some friends for life, we had some incredible experiences and feel ready to smash our next campaign. Goodbye Bushweek! Thanks to all the crew who made it the BEST WEEK EVER!!  Huge congrats to David-Day Mattar who smashed out a new PB of 7@180 on Thursday in Innisfail.
David has been focusing on bringing genuine connection and a touch of performance art back into his pitch and has set a new goal to join the Zen Ten Club in the coming weeks. Watch the space. Wow. Happy Faces have had some crazy adventures over the past week, and more to come with Bushweek Festival on the horizon YAY! :D
The climb has been described as treacherous and many tourists have become lost, some for several days, while climbing the mountain. A few hours in, we began to see why. Bartle Frere is extremely steep, covered in dense jungle with rapidly changing weather conditions and path markers which are often hard to see. During our ascent light rain and heavy mist made it difficult to see where we were going which meant we did wander off the path several times. Pit stops for peanut butter and jam sandwiches were numerous and satisfying but did come at a price. The price was leeches. And the currency was our blood. Not just one leech, hundreds and hundreds leeches fed on us every chance they got. They were in our socks, under our clothes, I even woke up with one on my face. Not nice. By the time we reached our camp spot (A small clearing in the jungle) it was raining hard and our pop up tent offered little protection from the rain, the cold or the forest leeches. Not exactly the peaceful back to nature slumber we had anticipated. To top it all off, the continuing bad weather the next day meant that for all our efforts there would be no chance of a view :(. All that said, we were all glad we did it. We burnt more than a few calories and we all felt INCREDIBLE when we got off the mountain and had a warm cup of tea and a hot shower. It was all worth it for that feeling alone. If we can survive the Bartle Frere we can survive anything. Bartle frere, we salute you.  In other news, Big congrats to Mr Day who conquered all fear and took a leap of faith off the 50 meter tower at AJ Hacketts. Why live on the edge when you can jump off it..right? :) David also hit a new PB inspiring 5 awesome people in one day this week and has been getting some high unit values. Well done mate. Next stop. Cape York.
 Happy Faces have migrated North chasing an everlasting summer. That's how we roll ;) The North has been good to us and we would like to give a BIG welcome to the one and only David Day, professional fundraiser all the way from the lovely Liverpool, UK.  David has a beautiful soul and is working hard on the Red Cross campaign with ROCK-stars Mark and Isaac. Mark and Isaac where lucky enough to spend the weekend trekking on horse back though the stunning Atherton Tablelands, compliments of a true Aussie local and word on the street is Isaac had one to many and fell off his horse! The FLORIDAAAAA has returned from New Zealand, ALIVE against all odds and is getting involved with some head hunting down Sydney way, WELCOME BACK FLO :) An incentive has been set for a ticket to the Kuranda Roots Festival in June plus two free nights camping. Watch the space. http://www.kurandaroots.com/ There was also a "build me up buttercup" incident at host Isaac's Karaoke night..but I think we will leave that there...  Not only do happy faces know how to have a great time. We also know how to bust some awesome QUALITY fundraising. Massive well done to the team for producing 100 PERCENT QUALITY on last weeks sales. Congratulations to Rachel Holmes for beating her PB week in both units and quality. Happy Faces covered some serious ground this week and ticked off heaps of tourist attractions which were high on the to do list :) First up was the drive on the infamous Savannah Way, a beautiful stretch of road which connects Cairns in QLD to Broome in Western Australia. The Savannah highway stretches an impressive 3501km across Australia and we joined the track just North of Mount Isa. Along the way we stopped at the Cumberland Dam, an area of QLD renowned for its variety of bird life which congregates here at various times of the year. It’s always beautiful to see out of place lakes in the middle of the desert but we were most fascinated by the termite mounds which engulfed the surrounding area. These termite mounds have been known to grow up to 30 meters in diameter and in Darren Fittlers (http://www.darrenfittler.com/) spirit of curiosity we had to learn more.  It appears that the structure of termite mounds can be very complicated. These little fellas essentially build great cities underground which is pretty cool. They build ventilation systems in the mounds which consist of numerous gallery chambers as well as a central nest and some mounds have even been known to feature chimneys. Termites orient their mounds North to South, a feat your average human struggles to achieve without the aid of a good compass so Happy Faces were suitably impressed.
Finally, we have the reproductives. This includes the king and queen of the termites. The queen spends all her time eating, mating and resting and can grow up to six centimeters long while the lower classes are held back to less than 1 centimeter. We think the working class termites need to campaign for some equality. Termite revolution anyone? To this day professors in animal physiology don’t fully understand how termites collectively work together to achieve these formidable architectural structures. Here's a good article on the mystery from National Geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140731-termites-mounds-insects-entomology-science/ OK...we have gone a little termite mad...moving on... Next stop was Undara Volcanic National Park, famous for being home to the largest lava tubes in the world. Undara is an aboriginal word meaning long way. We have now arrived in Atherton Tablelands, which has to be one of the most postcard perfect places in Australia. Rolling green hills, spotted with windmills (happy faces LOVE renewable energy), beautiful lakes, waterfalls and the most incredible curtain fig tree are just some of Athertons treasures. There are several tours to chose from at Undara Volcanic National Park. They range from sunset cave tours were you can enjoy a spectacular sunset with sparkling wine and cheese to the active explorer which includes rock scrambling and hiking through trickier parts of the lava caves. We opted to climb to the top of the 190 thousand year old Undara volcano. The view was 360 degrees and spectacular. It’s advisable to book ahead for the Undara experience, curious travelers can book direct via: http://undara.com.au/our-history/collins-family-history/ One of the highlights of the trip was a day drive turned midnight safari. We spotted curlews, huge kangaroos, owls, a huge australian bustard, iguanas, tree frogs, herds of cattle and horses. But the cherry on the cake was when we stopped on a bridge on the outback road to Atherton. It was pitch dark outside, and we started to joke that there may be crocs in the river beneath us. Our no fear Wigan Warrior leans over right away with her phone torch and yells out "omg crocodile". We laugh, and look over the edge of the bridge and sure enough, an ACTUAL crocodile, maybe 1 meter long just hanging out by a rock. Amazing. He didn't like seem to like the spotlight though as he swam off in a matter of seconds. But WOW. Good spotting Rach ;) If we could stay in Atherton forever, we would.
Happy Faces have been so busy getting lost in the wild we are only just getting around to a new blog update :) What a week! Our Wigan Warrior Rachel Holmes smashed out a new PB on Monday, inspiring 6 awesome new Red Cross supporters and Abbilicious got 4 on her first day. Great work girls. We arrived to Mount Isa just as the sun was setting over the 6th largest copper mine in the world. It was quite a site after 10 hours driving through the desert and as it was Anzac Day there was only one thing for it! We had been given a heads up that The Buff was the place to be, and it was. Especially when we found the downstairs club! Some crazy shapes where thrown, but not one from the Danish corner. (Thor does NOT dance!) The drive to Mount Isa was long and we've never seen so much roadkill, poor kangaroos. :( The drive got even longer when certain members of the team decided that we needed to check all road kill for pouch joeys haha, (none found). The team took a tour of the famous underground Hard Times Mine and our tour guide Neil was full of Irish wit and charm. He told us stories of the olden day mines, the conditions the workers had to work with and we got to have a go at the old drills and machinery which was a big hit.  It's getting cold here so we are heading up North for some sunshine and to recruit some new Happy Faces into the family, exciting times ahead :)
Happy Faces had a smasher of a week this week in the lovely Townsville. We raised HEAPS of money for Doctors Without Borders and welcomed two new Happy Faces to the team in the form of the lovely Rachel Holmes and Charlotte Hagan all the way from Manchester. Rachel proved herself to have natural talent, inspiring three sales on her first day and four on her second and Charlotte was our Quality Queen of the week with 0% export loss. The girls are excited to finish training and get out on the next Road trip. To celebrate the weeks successes, the team took a trip to Magnetic Island to enjoy the tropical settings of the Amaroo on Mandalay resort. Lots of face painting, neon colours and dancing made for a great Friday night at the infamous Full Moon Party and the rest of the weekend was wiled away with bush walking, snorkelling the reef, games of tennis and sunbathing by the pool. Happy Faces are feeling refreshed and ready for another BIG week of saving the world and spreading the love :D
As if one weekend of sun, sand, sea and ocean spray wasn't enough for Happy Faces we took ourselves up the coast to the beautiful Airlie beach for a week of rest and recruitment. We stayed at the Boat Haven Spa Resort which had stunning views over the harbor and we got to catch up with one of our favorite Happy Faces, Clemmy Morin. Happy Faces have a lot of moments where we can't believe how lucky we are. And with not one, but two trips around the Whitsunday Islands, Airlie beach definitely gave us a few of those moments. The first trip was with Eco barge clean seas, who provide Eco conscious travelers the opportunity to cruise the Islands free of charge in exchange for a morning of litter picking on the beaches. Eco barge aims to (1) remove marine debris to reduce its impacts; (2) reduce land-based litter and littering behavior to prevent the occurrence of local marine debris; and (3) provide care for sick and injured marine turtles. In 2014 the crew along with their volunteers ran 40 trips, and removed 12,607 kilograms of primarily plastic marine debris from the Whitsunday region. Lets keep our beaches clean!! Free lunch and refreshments on a stunning private island with some great crew is all part of the experience. Happy Faces feel passionate about the protection of marine life and if you would like to learn more, or want to help, check out the Eco barge Clean Seas website: http://www.ecobargecleanseas.org.au The second trip was with White haven Express and was an incredible day of bush walking, sailing, building sandcastles on fine white sand, snorkeling the reef at Hook Island, and beach barbecues with some awesome people. The lookout point at Hill Inlet did not disappoint and it's hard to believe it's even a real place when you are there. Amazing. All in all, rest and recruitment week was a success and Happy Faces are excited to get our new Charity Champions out on the field next week in Townsville. It's going to be a BIG week. Watch the space.
|
RSS Feed
