Do you ever wonder what it must be like working for Black Diamond Adventures? Students are with us for a few days… Each day we are on our own Black Diamond Adventures course, living and breathing what we teach to live an authetnic life.
I genuinely love coming into work and facing the day’s challenges alongside an amazing team.
To say that I have learned a lot over the past two years would be an understatement, on par with saying that Black Diamond Adventures is just an outdoor education company.
I remember very vividly when I first came across Black Diamond Adventures and decided to contact Rob about a job. I was on an overnight bus in Vietnam, scrolling through adventure job posts for Australia, while sneakily eating a can of knock-off pringles because the bus driver was a grumpy man and would patrol the bus making sure no one was eating in their bunks.
I had a one-way flight booked out to Brisbane but had no job set up for when I got there. This is an exciting feeling at first but can also be a bit daunting and inevitably turns into a panic-y “What am I doing with my life?!”. After a few months of trying my hand at English teaching, and quickly realising that my 7-year-old Vietnamese students knew more about conjugal verbs than I did, I knew it was time to get back to what I was good at and look for some Outdoor Education work. I came across a job advert from Black Diamond Adventures and lying there in the dark on my tiny bunk (pringles now confiscated), I wrote out a cover letter and sent an email from my iPhone. Ready for a bit of cliché soppy stuff? Well, little did I know that sending that email would be one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Fast forward a few weeks and I’m in Brisbane staying with family. Rob emails me that I should head down to a small town called Bulli near Sydney for a chat and to see if I’d be a good fit for Black Diamond Adventures. For most people flying from Brisbane to Sydney for a maybe-job (I may have told Rob that I was heading to Sydney anyway), having only had contact over email, would seem like a long shot. But I had a strong feeling that I wanted to work with this guy. I learned quickly over a coffee and some bacon and eggs (thanks Rob) that Black Diamond’s philosophy and my own lined up perfectly. I was keen to be working for Black Diamond Adventures.
The following couple of years have simultaneously flown by and crawled at a snail’s pace (COVID I’m looking at you). I have been lucky enough to be involved with Black Diamond Adventures every step of the way as they have grown and evolved amid an extremely unpredictable and turbulent couple of years. Like the rest of Australia, we were knocked back by bush fires and lockdowns again and again. Yet, under the direction of Rob we were able to seize opportunities when they arrived, pivot when we needed to and hibernate when necessary. Who would have thought that the BDA team would become professional podcasters? The Black Diamond Adventures Podcast, check it out.
Working for Black Diamond Adventures — What I’ve learnt
To say that I have learned a lot over the past two years working for Black Diamond Adventures would be an understatement on par with saying that BDA is just an outdoor education company. One of the main things that drew me to BDA, and has kept me here, is that we are unlike most companies in the industry. First and foremost, BDA’s driving force is the goal of connecting and building relationships with students. The activities that we provide and facilitate are always second to that main goal. Only when those connections have been made do we then try and get the best out of our students. In my time of working in the industry, I have noticed that too often with many companies the opposite is true. I’m so glad that I have found a company that has reinstalled my love for this work and reminded me why I started in the first place.
Another point of difference that sets BDA apart in my eyes is the culture that Rob has created. I have had jobs where I dreaded getting up in the morning and couldn’t wait until I was able to leave at the end of the day. Here, however, I genuinely love coming into work and facing the day’s challenges alongside an amazing team. I have countless examples of when this job has not felt like a job. Perhaps my favourite though concerns a last-minute trip up to Crescent Head.
We were all set for a busy few months of hiking trips when we got the news of the first COVID restrictions and therefore our first of many trip postponements. The future looking bleak, Rob decided we needed a staff ‘brainstorming trip’. So that week, off we went up to Crescent Head for a some surfing (Rob surfed and I did my best to float), eating pies and spending hours brainstorming and working on ways that we could maximise the most out of this time. I will be forever grateful for that trip, and the trust given to me to have an insight and a say in all the behind-the-scenes workings and decisions at Black Diamond Adventures.
However, it’s not all surf trips and rainbows. When we are on program, like Duke of Edinburgh for example, it’s close to the hardest and longest hours I’ve ever worked. Despite that, working for Black Diamond Adventures often doesn’t feel like work. I think a big part of that is because everyone gets stuck in, everyone puts in the same effort, and we all have each other’s backs. Some might find that surprising and can’t imagine what we do out on camp being all that hard. I get the feeling that people often think we are just out on holiday! However, the reality of the job is a little different.
I’ll give you an example: on a standard school camp we’re up at 5:30am to start cooking breakfast for 200 kids (if you want to sneak in a shower or some fitness this happens before then). Once fed we are then running and facilitating activities all day and serving lunch too. Come evening time when the kids are on their shower hour, we are back in the kitchen firing up the BBQs for dinner. After running an evening activity and making sure we are prepped for the next day we then finally have our staff meeting at 10:30/11:00pm. It’s tough work. So is waking up and doing it all over again the next day, all week. But I love it because it’s rewarding, fun, challenging and hard.
I’m not sure what the future holds for Black Diamond Adventures, and as Rob is often saying, the direction of BDA is not set in stone. However, I know two things for certain: we will continue to grow and develop unique programs to inspire our students and we will keep growing the incredible Black Diamond Adventures team.
Holding true to his habit of finding the right people for the job and convincing them to work for him, Rob recently hired his ex-student Tyson as our very first trainee. A young man who is an absolute natural with kids, and the only person I’ve ever seen to be able to capture and hold the attention of 120 teenagers by singing and dancing to a rendition of ‘99 bottles of beer’. Stay tuned to hear from Tyson in our next Blog.
