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Living In A Box

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Living in a box, Australia

Big Brother is watching you...

By Nicola Austin

In the box

I believe that every traveller has at least one moment where they think - what on earth am I doing? For me it came in an Adelaide mall courtesy of a local radio station.

I suppose the simplest way to sum it all up is: 10 People for 10 days in a 10 foot by 10 foot Perspex box to win $10,000. Ultimately I entered a Big Brother style competition where I battled it out against my other ‘cubemates’ for the prize money.

Each day we had to complete a number of different tasks. These included keeping an exercise bike going non-stop for 24 hours, a mini Olympics (leapfrog the length of the mall, three legged race around the cube and a blindfolded egg race) the needle in a hay stack (they filled the cube with hay and put two needles in it and the first team to find one won). We also had a painting competition where we had to paint pictures of ourselves on the walls of the cube. The losers had to wash it all off whilst In the box

the winners were eating a party size subway. One of our favourite pastimes wasn’t an actual task, but we loved making a human pyramid. We even did it blind folded once.

I won a jigsaw competition on Day Five and they went and got my bed from the house I was living in and put it in the cube that night. It’s a good job I wasn’t still in the youth hostel and in a bunk bed although that could have been fun. No-one else was allowed in it. I felt like a princess with all the others sleeping at my feet. Then in the morning, DJ Laids came and got in bed with me to do a TV interview. Not many people can say they’ve done that - been interviewed on telly by a top DJ whilst in you own bed, in a Perspex box in the mall.

In the box

I was evicted on Day Six - not bad I reckoned. It’s a weird feeling knowing that 1000’s of people - who don’t know you - have taken the time to ring up the radio station to vote you out and even weirder when they vote for you to stay in. I was number one to win for ages on the internet polls - but the internet votes didn’t count. I think a lot of my popularity was due to my mum and her mates in the office voting for me all the time!

We all got on brilliantly and I'm still in touch with a couple of the other cubemates. The radio station also made us a book with loads of pictures in as well as all of our fan mail... mostly from my mum! I never thought that I would win - after all I was a pommy backpacker. I just entered because I thought it would a laugh and we all know that backpackers will do anything for free accommodation!

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