Hey All for those who weren't aware (or have seen my fb) I'm a 3rd year Apprentice in Heavy Steel Fabrication (so a simple boilermaker :-) I was selected about 4 months ago to represent my region and state in the World Skills National Comp on Sept 18-21 Held in Perth WA http://www.worldskills.org.au/.
Our category was the Engineering Excellence Team Challenge which consisted of myself (the boily) and another apprentice Brock (fitter machinist). We had to build a functioning hammer crane within an 18 Hour time frame from scratch using our given skill set.
So it was a barrel of fun and a little bit stressy, having never been on a plane before I was packing it but survived after all. I had a great time over there and I think I spent about $80 total. It was all funded by my employer Ultrafloor and World Skills so that was a positive all my tools were purchased by my employer (that was a fun shopping trip ) and sent over for my use in the comp..
I represented the Hunter Region and NSW in my category which had 10 teams of 2 from every state/territory, 5 Teams worked on day work 5 on afternoon shift. There were 500 competitors across 48 Trades, the Hunter had a team of 17 we took out 10 Medals and the Evatt Shield for most medals for a region so that was cool too.
Anyhoo some pics and a vid of our 3 mins of fame . We win it at 2h30mins