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Work Experience Down Under!

STUDENT Linsey Maxwell has organised some work experience with a difference. For the 17-year-old Stranraer Academy pupil will, at the start of June, fly to the other side of the world to Brisbane Zoo.

Because Linsey, who lives in Portpatrick, wants to be a marine biologist, there was nowhere she could go in this area for work experience under the Academy programme.

Then she saw Aussie Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter of TV fame, on a television programme about his zoo in Brisbane. She wrote to him to see if she could do work experience there. And much to her surprise, back came the reply - "Yes".

"It is because I saw him on the TV I wrote to the zoo", Linsey explained. "I thought it looked so nice".

She added: "My mother and father think I am mad but it is a great opportunity".

Linsey, together with school chums Karen Erskine and Jennifer Baird, also from Portpatrick, fly Down Under on 4th June and she starts her work experience on 24th June.

"I will be there for four weeks and the rest of the time I will get a tan", she laughed.

Linsey has to be back home for September. Then she hopes to go to Queen's University in Belfast to study marine biology.