Sean’s on top of the world

Twenty-one-year-old Sean Toms has found his calling in being an outdoor adventure guide in New Zealand, carving up the snow as a ski coach each winter before swapping the slopes for more rocky terrain in the summer, working as a mountain bike patroller.

Like many teenagers, Sean craved a career full of excitement, so when it came to deciding on a path, he knew a standard office job wasn’t going to cut it. Having attended high school in Singapore, where his mother taught for a living, Sean was bitten by the travel bug early on and found his interest in piqued by the school’s outdoor education program.

“They pushed their outdoor education program hard and we got to go on a lot of cool trips,” Sean said.

“I saw what the teacher was doing and thought it would be a cool career, so I asked him what he studied, and that was on my mind when I came back to Australia.”

Sean returned to Australia when he was halfway through year 11 and—like most people his age, was considering which path to take—when he came across the Certificate IV in Outdoor Leadership (SIS40621). Delivered at TAFE Queensland's Mooloolaba campus, the course equips its students with the skills to lead, guide and instruct outdoor recreation activities.

From the moment he started the course, Sean said he knew it was right for him, with the hands-on training and frequent excursions keeping him engaged and excited to learn.

“The amount of time we spent out of the classroom was amazing – I thought it would be the same as school, but most of the learning happened outdoors, which is exactly as it should be,” he said.

“I have nothing but amazing things to say about the teachers. They were great role models and made everything safe while letting us apply what we’d been taught and learn from our mistakes. Working with kids in the outdoors, a lot of unexpected stuff can happen, so I feel that letting us make our own decisions and giving us the chance to solve problems on our own was crucial in preparing us for the industry.”

However, as the youngest in his class, his youth did result in one unexpected challenge.

“While yes, I was younger than all the other students in my class, I also ended up being younger than some of the ‘kids’ we had to work with when I started work placement,” he laughs.

Sean graduated and began working in the outdoor education at just 17, boarding a plane to New Zealand just one year later on a mission to forge his own unique career path. And in the four years since, he has done exactly that.

“I have been a ski instructor, a heli-bike guide and a mountain bike instructor in Queenstown, have been over to Japan to work as a ski guide, came back to Australia to work in outdoor education again, returned to Queenstown and worked as a freeride skiing coach, and have spent this past summer working in a first responder position as a bike patroller at a mountain bike park,” Sean said.

“I’m about to get back into ski coaching for the winter, where I’ll be training 10 to 15-year-olds. So, what I do is pretty varied.”

Sean has since worked to grow his skills and broaden his opportunities—passing his Level 2 ski instructing exam, his Level 5 Avalanche Risk Management certification and his Pre-Hospital Emergency Care certification—and is now working towards becoming a fully qualified ski guide. He has also taught himself to rock and ice climb, and has begun ski mountaineering, with his dream to be fully certified in winter and summer guiding.

“Once you’re a qualified guide you can travel, as they’re wanted all over the world. I’d love to go ski mountaineering in Canada, Nepal, and India – anywhere around the world, really,” he said.

Sean said that while these certifications are helping him advance his career by developing particularly skill sets, it’s the lessons he learned during his Certificate IV in Outdoor Leadership (SIS40621) have been the most useful.

“It (the course) has set me up for countless job opportunities and given me amazing experiences,” Sean said.

“It’s given me the practical skills I’ve needed in my roles, as well as transferrable soft skills that have helped in all aspects of my life. For example, the skills I need in chair lift rescues are similar to the high ropes rescue skills I learned during the course, and the facilitating techniques I learned have helped me through every guiding job I’ve had, allowing me to quickly and effectively pass information to groups of people.”

Clearly passionate about exploring nature and keeping active, Sean’s adventure-seeking ways have also spilled into his own time, and at 21-years-of-age he has already completed full ski descents of Mount Earnslaw, Mount Aspiring, Mount Cook, as well as a partial ski of the Syme Ridge on Mount Tasman.

And as he enters his fifth ski season since entering the industry, Sean is clearly happy with the life he has carved out for himself.

“Helping people get out of their comfort zone and explore things they haven’t done before—expand their opinions on what they think they can achieve—is a great feeling. Not only do I get to do these amazing activities as part of my job, I get to see the joy of other people experiencing it for the first time, which is pretty rewarding,” he said.