Maltese candidate misses out on world's best job

Pierre Azzopardi, the Maltese dreamer who hoped he would win The Best Job In The World competition, is disappointed he was not one of the 50 shortlisted candidates but has no regrets.

"Probably the organisers felt that it would be unfair to choose me as they wanted to give the less fortunate people a chance in life," he said jokingly in a message he sent out to the people who had joined his Facebook group to support him.

The well-paid and much-publicised job will consist of serving as caretaker on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. It involves feeding turtles, meeting holidaymakers, making use of all the facilities, including a seaplane, and writing about your experience to help market the islands there.

It pays €76,000 for six months and includes free airfares from the successful candidate's home country to the island of white sands and clear waters. In a telephone interview, Mr Azzopardi said yesterday that throughout the competition he had been doing very well in the popularity rankings and had even placed first for a while.

"It was exciting and it was close. I definitely thought I stood a good chance," he said. But after that, hundreds of new applicants submitted professionally-produced video-applications and he slowly started to drop further down the rankings.

"My application was created very spontaneously. I just grabbed a camera and came up with something fun."

He explained that his family members had high hopes for him and were already dreaming of packing their bags to spend six months with him.

"I think they're going to make me pay for a holiday now!"

But although his wife and children were just as excited as him, they also knew that the chances were very slim.

The competition attracted a total of 34,684 applicants from some 200 countries, all hoping to become the caretaker of Hamilton Island as part of a tourism promotion organised by the Queensland state government.

On Tuesday, the organisers announced a shortlist of 50 candidates from 22 countries, including the US, Britain, Russia, India, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Kenya.

Mr Azzopardi said the process itself was a great experience and he was pleased that he took part and got his 15-minutes of fame.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com