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

which doesn’t sound like much, but it was hot and the start of the monsoon season and the terrain was difficult – roads were muddy and full of potholes. On the first day we cycled 100 kilometres and that nearly killed us all. But we did it proudly wearing our ChildFund T-shirts. Briggs and I paid for our fares to Cambodia out of our own pockets so all of the $15,000 we’d raised went to the school.
    We actually visited the school, which was a real eye- opener. Classes were held in two shifts because of the number of students. The kids were all so cute and shy. Briggs sat at a table with what we thought were five- and six-year-old girls. The interpreter explained that most of the children in the class were ten to fourteen years of age! We later discovered that the kids were so small as a result of malnutrition.
    I was so excited about our ability to raise this money for a good cause I wanted to do more. I said to Briggs, enthusiastically, ‘Let’s set up our own charity.’ Briggs was more circumspect. ‘Let’s wait.’ That’s quite funny now, considering she went on to become a professional fundraiser.
    I was always compelled to make a physical contribution rather than just donating money and in my third year of uni I got involved with an organisation called Habitat for Humanity. It works in Third-World countries on community-based projects to help reduce poverty. At the time, Habitat was working on housing projects in Mongolia. Volunteers had to pay their own way and I joined a team of about fifteen volunteers who travelled to a small village near a town called Erdenet in Mongolia to build cement-block houses. We were there for three weeks, and it was cold and our accommodation a bit basic, but I loved it. We stayed in tents called
gers
and I was shocked when I found out how much a
ger
cost – US$5000! I guess that explained why there would sometimes be up to twenty people in a five-metre diameter tent. I loved the Mongolian people – they liked playing games, although they never quite got the hang of rugby league and preferred soccer.
    Part of gaining an engineering degree is doing work experience over the three-month summer break. My first job was at an open-cut coal mine in Singleton in New South Wales as a surveyor’s assistant, where I had to do pretty basic stuff like hammering in the pegs and measuring windrows. I liked it but in reality I was too caught up with partying with the other vacation students to get really involved. The following year I was at another open-cut coal mine – at Hail Creek near Mackay in Queensland. That was better as another work experience student and I actually got to do some engineering work such as drill and blast designs. The third work experience was with a mine consultancy in Sydney; I chose this as I knew it would be my last summer in Sydney and I could be near my family and go home for weekends.
    By this stage Michael and I were together.

TWO
MICHAEL
    M ICHAEL H OSKIN, KNOWN AS ‘H OSKO ’ TO HIS FRIENDS, WAS Genji’s best friend and three years older than me. He was a year ahead of Genji at school but they both lived for surfing and were always in the water. He’d come to the house with Genji and we were just mates; I knew he thought of me as ‘Genji’s little sister’. But I always thought he was hot, really sexy-looking – he is fair-haired, very fit and has a great body. I had a crush on him from the time I was about fifteen. I used to fantasise about us getting married and having kids together.
    We’d be at the same parties but nothing ever happened. One night, after a party at my place when I was in Year 12, Michael had too much to drink and someone put him to bed in my bed. ‘Oh goodie,’ I thought when I saw him and hopped in beside him but I must have passed out too because when I woke up he was gone. This also happened on another occasion when I invited him to a party at my place. Once again he ended up asleep on my bed and once again nothing