MORE THAN WELCOME - Katy Usher West Coast Rail Part 2 - 21.04.24

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's both this morning and we are again chatting with
Katie Usher, who is the guest experienced supervisor at West
Coast Wilderness Railway. Now you've not only worked there, but
you've worked in New Zealand and you've worked on boats.
What sort of jobs have you been doing?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Mainly tour guiding on boats, sort of marine mammal guiding,
so dolphins, wales, whatnot. And then when I came to Tasmania,
I did some wilderness guiding on a boat out of
Strawn as well, and I was there for two years.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
When it comes to looking at tourism, say as a career,
why would you think that that's an important thing for
people to consider.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I think there's a preconception and a misconception that you
can't have a career in tourism. It's just you know,
a stopover gap when you're studying or you know, in
between looking for in inverted coom as a real job.
But there are some amazing careers in tourism in lots
of different things, from hospitalities so in front of house,

(00:53):
back of house, cooking, chefing, kitchen handing to what I'm
mainly focused on, so guiding. And you know we have
stewards on the train who work in a premium carriage
and serve food and beverage on the train, and then
we have a compary stewards doing guiding. We've got cleaners
who do so much more than cleaning. They look after
huge remote stations and you know, sales and marketing admin

(01:16):
resident ticketing. I think there's so much more to a
career in tourism than what you maybe see on the surface.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
When you say it's like a stop over until you
get a real job, does that make you think this
is like you get to have a bit of fun
first before you're miserable for the next forty years of
your life. Or is that just me that that's the
image it conjured up when you said that.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I think that that's that is the conception of people
when they look at jobs of you know that we
traditionally had in my age group going to university, you know,
you would work in a restaurant or bah while you
were studying, and you know you would focus on getting
a job that was linked to what you were studying before.
And there's no harm in just staying in hospitality if
you really like it, if you really like what you're doing,

(01:54):
as a part time job. There's no reason why you
should have to have to give that up in order
to find some thing that's can sive as a more
traditional job.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
I think that makes a very good point in the
fact that it is a fun job, and I guess
there is so much that you can do and you've
got so much wiggle room to grow in whatever kind
of role that you start off in.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah. Yeah, just because you start in something, that doesn't
mean that that will be your hospitality job forever. You
can move around like you doing other jobs. You can
work somewhere for a couple of years and you can progress,
or you can move on or Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Well you've already managed to do a fair bit of
movement within and now that you've stepped into it as
a full time career, do you think this is a
career path that you're going to follow predominantly for your
working life. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
I can see myself in tourism for quite a chunk
of the next few years at least. It's hard to
think that far ahead, yep, and you never know what happened,
but there's definitely enough interest from me in my specific
role to see me through for at least five or
six years and yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Do you find it's a passion based job as well
for people who are in the various roles that they're
generally quite passionate about what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah. The people I work with particularly do have a
passion with quite a niche tourism experience. So we have
a lot of people who do particularly love trains and
that's why they love working there, or they love history
and that's why they love working on the train. But
I think you can mix your passion and a career
quite easily. There's obviously there's parts of every job people
don't like, and you're always going to have a part

(03:21):
of your job you don't like. But I think if
you find something that you do, really really love, you
can do it every day and there's no harm in that.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
We're going to pop a pin in it there. We'll
come right back. We're talking with Katie Asher, who is
the guest experienced supervisor at West Coast Wilderness Railway. This
is your more than welcome