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Kelly O'Hagan - Kayaking
If you love kayaking, there aren’t many better places to live than the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. Queensland has warm water, great surf, exciting rivers and beautiful touring routes. The state is enormous but the roads are good, and the Sunshine Coast definitely lives up to its name! No surprises that this is where Kelly O’Hagan, kayaking enthusiast, has ended up living and working.Kelly is an instructor for Kanu Kapers Australia, an organisation that runs outdoor programs with an emphasis on personal and professional development. Kelly had a late start in her paddling life but is now making up for it by embracing the sport whole heartedly, not stopping at one branch of the sport but taking up flat water, white water and sea kayaking, and instructing in all three!
Kelly says that she’s been very fortunate in her paddling, to meet the right people at the right time to guide, mentor and encourage her. Currently her mentors are the women who run Kanu Kapers Australia, Vivienne Golding and Kym McGregor, who Kelly says have helped her to grow with her paddling, her personal growth and her knowledge and understanding of the outdoors.
Kelly says that her best accomplishment has been turning what she loves into what she does every day. She says that she loves her job and her life, and sometimes has difficulty calling her job work because she enjoys it so much! Even though she has her dream job, Kelly has continued to pursue qualifications and experience, obtaining her Diploma of Outdoor Recreation last year and currently studying Adventure Based Youth Work.If you’re up in sunny Queensland and keen for a paddle, look up Kelly and the team - they run trips all over Queensland and Northern NSW. Even if you don’t like kayaking, perhaps you can draw some inspiration from Kelly, who has chased down her dream job and now has trouble calling it work! If more people could say the same thing about their jobs, I’m sure it would be a better world.
For more information on Kanu Kapers Australia, visit the website here.