Everything to Live For: The Inspirational Story of Turia Pitt Read Free

Tahitians.
    I also started doing some work in my uncle’s business at weekends to get some extra cash. He was in the stamp and coin business and we would travel to various stamp and collectors’ fairs all over the place, sometimes even interstate. He sold the accessories that go with collecting – albums, tweezers and so on – which everyone needs, and we didn’t have much competition.
    I started modelling at uni to make some extra money. I needed to find a way to fund my planned travels. One job required the girls to wear swimsuits and high heels and as I walked out, I stumbled into the girl in front of me causing both of us to nearly fall over. It wasn’t a good look and I knew there and then I wasn’t cut out to be a model. Besides, I found it boring; it was also tiresome to travel to a casting only to be told you weren’t pretty enough, tall enough, skinny enough. I thought I was just right.
    While I was at uni I tried to go home at weekends as much as I could to see family and friends; Briggs and Nicola were still there and we’d party with local friends. And of course I’d surf. I got my driver’s licence but I didn’t have a car. Once, when I was about eighteen, I borrowed Mum’s car without telling her and crashed it into the local Kentucky Fried Chicken shop. When Mum saw the car outside in the morning with its front crunched in she was not too impressed. Sorry, Mum! I was still a P-plater and I lost my licence for six months, which I wasn’t happy about.
    I did some more meaningful things while I was at uni. I had always been interested in doing something to help children in Third World countries because no matter where children are from, they’re still children and need to have food and be educated. My first participation in a fundraiser for children was doing the annual 40-Hour Famine when I was ten. I was tall for my age, though fairly slim, and probably because I was so active I was quite strongly affected by hunger pains and felt a bit weak by the second day; Mum said it was okay to stop but I wouldn’t give in. She says it’s my Leo stubbornness – I was born with a small bump on my head and she calls it the ‘stubborn bump’.
    A friend who knew I was into projects to help children sent me an email about ChildFund International, a not-for-profit charity which at the time was raising money to help build primary schools in the Svay Chrum district of Cambodia. I called Briggs about it and she was up for it; ‘Let’s do it,’ she said. Our aim was to raise $15,000 between us – $7500 each.
    We found the fundraising hard going. A lot of people have no idea what goes on in Cambodia so it’s not unreasonable that they ask why they should donate money; we had to stay motivated and motivate others. I was fitting in uni studies and Briggs now had a job in Sydney but we worked well as a team. We held discos and surfing competitions at weekends, and the money came in slowly. We would put our heart and soul into organising an event and would think it must have raised at least $4000 to find we’d only made $800! Our best event did actually raise nearly $4000, which we were naturally excited about. It was a surfing event called the Ocean and Earth Teenage Rampage. We managed to organise a deal where every dollar that was donated from the crowd, Coastal Watch would match. So the $2000 we raised was matched by Coastal Watch. Our slogan for the day was ‘Help Phil Macdonald raise money for a school in Cambodia’. Phil Macdonald is a pro surfer and is sponsored by Ocean and Earth.
    Also, we had a lot of local support: we got some corporate sponsors, several Rotary Clubs (Ulladulla, St Leonards, Neutral Bay, North Sydney and Randwick) agreed to back us and we had a donor’s page through ChildFund.
    When we got to Cambodia, as part of the fundraising awareness for the school we joined a group of fifteen riders cycling around the country, which was organised by ChildFund. It was only 350 kilometres,