My Week At Schoolies Fiji

Waiting at the airport at 5 am on a Saturday Morning with 500 other people, surrounded by nervous parents trying to provide the best advice they could before we set off on the day of travel, you find yourself strangely calm, although, you haven’t slept in 2 days because of excitement. You know you didn’t pack what you needed, but you don’t care. You aren’t quite sure how you will survive if there is no phone reception, but you remain positive. You finally get to the front of the check in line, your parents can’t go any further than here. Freedom is so close you can taste it.

The flight is nearly 4 hours, so understandably sitting next to two random people you have to talk. You start to talk about what you think the week will be like, your expectations, the stories you have heard from previous years. The girl next to you tells you how her sister was here last year, and it was ‘so sick’. You have no idea what to expect, but her confidence rubs off on you.

The humidity hits like a brick wall when you get off the plane – and that’s when reality sets in. You have just travelled to paradise to spend a week on the beach for Schoolies. Everyone gets shuttled around to the marina, then onto the boat. This is when the excitement starts. The island is only an hour away. An hour until your week can really begin. An hour before you can have a drink and celebrate the last 13 years of school without the worries of being in Australia.

The next 7 nights are some of the wildest you have ever seen. Guys haven’t worn shirts all week, everyone has given up on wearing shoes. You go from the pool to dinner, dinner to the bar and the bar to the beach club for one of the 7 themed nightly parties. Every person on the island is there, and you are all there for the same reason – to have the best week of your lives. When the night finishes you end up back in the bure, fast asleep knowing you can get up and do it all again tomorrow.
Welcome to Schoolies in Fiji – The place where the only outfit necessary is swimmers. Where the food is included, where the sand is bleached white and the water is crystal clear. By the end of the week you will know every person on the island, regardless of where you grew up, or went to school. Regardless of your plans when you get home. You leave with an undying appreciation for sunscreen and air-conditioning and the memories to last a lifetime.

Take a tour, or lay on the beach, drink the days away or get active, dance the night away with sand under your feet – you choose. I went to Fiji when I left school in 2011 – I had the best week of my life. You will too. Schoolies.com. Treasure Island. Be there. I wish I could be.