Danish Exchange Student Wins Australia Day Award

Thu 11 Mar 2010

Mads Kruse is a Danish exchange student currently in Australia on a 10 month program. He is staying with the McClelland family from Tumbarumba, a town near the Snowy Mountains in Southern NSW. Mads recently won an Australia Day special achievement award for his work in the community. He has written to us to recount his experience.

Hey Student Exchange Australia!

It all started with me and my host Garry McClelland going on a little bush walk when I first got to Australia, on that little walk we got talking about this big walk called The Hume and Hovell walking track. My host mentioned that you could even get this special Hume and Hovell t-shirt, reckless as you are I said well why don’t we just do it, but on the single condition of that he bought me that t-shirt when we completed.

So we had a look in the calendar and decided to do the walk over several weekends, I got myself a good pair of hiking boots, and suddenly before we knew of it, we were ready to do the first walk.

It all was a little bit of an adventure for me, we started in freezing cold rain, to the other extreme of the boiling hot Australian heat- along with thousands of flies sending this Danish fella mad!

Even though it was quite a big effort we got to walk throw some amazing country: over mountains through firn gullies and across waterfalls, I also saw a big variety of the Australian wildlife in particularly hundreds of kangaroos! Brumbies etc.

Garry and I decided before the walk to make the event in to a fundraiser towards a new roof for the local scout hall, a thousand dollars was raised by selling our own personalized stubby holders (how more Aussie does it get?)

The community got very excited about the raising so Garry and I were, formally given an Australia day special achievement award for our efforts.

Receiving the award was very special, I felt very proud of myself and much honored that the community of Tumbarumba had nominated me, which only shows that they really respect me. And appreciate the efforts I do to becoming a part of the community. And besides how much more Aussie can you get with an Australia day award.

I have now been in Australia for nearly 8 months, and I love it here. During the time I have participated in Aussie rules(even won the grand final!), singing with the NSW high school state choir in the opera house, done the hume and hovel walk, went on the outback tour with other exchange students from all over the world, and turned out to become the best two weeks ever!

Been at the Gold Coast, Australian open, even participated as a Debut partner!

Hope that my story was interesting.

Best regards from Mads and the McClelland family.