Transcript
There's few places in the world you can just go and be pretty much on your own. It's just fantastic.
I love it when I'm out taking photos and you get those huge dark squalls come through and the sunlight is coming behind it. You can't want for a better scene to take great photos. It's not like it anywhere else in the world.
I honestly think in a world where we are increasingly less in touch with wildlife, our planet. Here, it's all around you. It's part of your daily life. Every day you feel the contact, feel the connection the whole time. For me, that's what makes it very, very special.
You really get a feeling for how small Stanley is. You start getting an idea of how vast the Falklands are. We might not be simply big overall, but you've got plenty of empty space here. We've got hundreds of thousands of sheep here in the Broadlands and only a few thousand people.
We are the only commercial helicopter company in the islands that often ourselves for commercial air transport. The customers are anybody that wants to go fly, but we have targeted the tourist industry and mainly the cruise ship passengers. I think this year it's probably 60 to 70,000 tourists visited the island throughout the season. We combine helicoptering in penance. It's whatever anybody wants to do. We will give it some consideration and track on and do it. Yeah. Have helicopters. We'll do flying.
I came to Falklands in 2001. I was only intending to be here for a couple of years and now 18 years down the track, I seem to be a Falkand Islander. My business has grown and evolved from a small little shed up the road to what it is now. I just love making and creating things. Well, what's not to love about running your own business? If I'm half an hour late, I have to tell myself off. I think customers are surprised sometimes when they come in and see that I do the work and I actually work behind the counter as well, but I enjoy connecting and meeting people and showing them and talking to them about what I do.
My business is Falkland Islands Distillers. It's a very small craft distilling project. The fun element with the gin has been just working with the local botanicals to take what would be a quite traditional gin and then give it Falkland's character, which really is quite unique. That's been the fun element and just the smells, just the aromas tastes fabulous. It was a tremendous feeling to make a product and taste it for the first time. The challenges of setting up a business in a remote location, just lots of leaps of faith, more than you would normally wish to have. Get that sweet, full of that. Nice. You get that little aftertaste better that way.
Its remoteness has many challenges, but it's one of its attractions as well.
You have to do everything. I can't just phone up a company and say, oh, can you courier it overnight? It just doesn't happen.
It's all about planning here. You've got to think 4, 5, 6 months ahead because so many of the materials we rely on have to come in by sea.
You have to have one foot in the past a little bit to keep the traditions and things, but you can't recite of the future as well, and things like technology is helping to develop the islands, but without losing sight on its traditions.
