This year was one of the toughest ever for students looking to go to university. Many got the grades they hoped for but missed out on their first choice uni. Others may have not done as well as they hoped but found they couldn’t find a place through clearing. With limited options, there is only one thing to do, take a gap year.

More and more young people are choosing gap years now. Some choose to gain valuable work experience by doing a career-based placement or sucking up un-paid work experience in the media, marketing and advertising sectors. Whilst this looks good on your C.V. it’s not always fun.

Many feel they could help make a difference elsewhere and choose to undertake a period of voluntary work in Africa, India or South America. This combines travel and work experience and means your C.V. will go to the top of the pile when you apply for jobs in the future.

However, if you want to travel, turning the journey itself into an experience, the best thing to do is back up a big 70 litre backpack and hit the open road. Backpacking makes your grow up, take responsibility and learn about the world whilst having months of fun. In a world where we spend more than 60% of our lives working, taking a few months out to enjoy yourself is a great idea.

So where should you be going if you’re a little nervous about going it alone? Being English, language is a problem and you don’t want to get stuck up the creek without a paddle. The most popular places to go backpacking these days for people ages 18 to 20 are Australia and New Zealand. Both countries are relatively safe. Being former colonies and now part of the British Commonwealth, there are many things to remind you of home, such as place names, a love of pie, good fish and chips and cricket. However, there are plenty of differences to confirm that you did indeed spend 24 hours travelling in economy class and that wasn’t just a nightmare.

On which subject, flights to popular destinations in the Antipodes are, mercifully, a lot cheaper than they used to be (DialAFlight's flights to Sydney start at about £700) so getting there and back won't necessarily bankrupt you!

The weather, particularly in Australia, is fabulous. Sun, sun and a bit more sun, define the summertime throughout Australia and Queensland and Northern Territories remain warm and sun-filled all year long.

Being outside and active is a big part of Aussie and Kiwi life and most people like to surf, bodyboard, sail, jog, cycle and walk. Another part of this alfresco lifestyle is the good old barbeque accompanied by cold beers, lots of meat and plenty of seafood.

Alright. Tell me about TNT Magazine, everything that it offers. Okay TNT Magazine is the best resource that you can find if you’re a backpacker or independent traveler coming to Australia of if you’re already here and you’re looking to plan the rest of your trip. Okay so where can you pick up TNT? We’ve got over 700 distribution points around Australia and basically wherever you find a backpacker, you find TNT so internet cafes, backpackers, hostels, the airports, bus depots, most information centers, everywhere like that.

Okay so let’s talk a little bit more about the magazine. So I’m a traveler and I’ve moved to Australia and I want to travel around Australia. Let’s talk about this Korean one first. It looks like it is aimed at Koreans. It sure is. TNT Korea. Just with the popularity of TNT Magazine Australia, of course TNT UK, we realized that the Korean market is becoming huge especially for working holiday makers so TNT Korea, we launched that in November and it’s pretty much TNT Australia translated into Korean with the relevant articles for Koreans who want to come and travel in Australia. So what I find in the Australia TNT, I could find in the New Zealand one and Korean one just translated. Yeah it’s just translated. The TNT Korea is for Koreans in Australia though and the TNT New Zealand is for travelers in New Zealand. Oh okay and this is the good old Aussie one that you can all use if you’re coming to Australia. That’s right.

So what have you got there? I’ve got here the ITG, Independent Travelers Guide, which we send all around the world to people in the UK when they are planning their trip to Australia and it’s got everything from maps of the different states, activities, places to go, all that sort of stuff.

Okay say I’m from England and I’m coming over on a holiday visa, how is this all going to help me? What’s the first step? If you’re coming over for your working holiday working visa, you’re going to want to find a job. We’ve got over a thousand jobs listings ontntdownunder.com. We’ve got an entire recruitment section in the back of TNT magazine where we’ve got jobs, classified, we’ve got a different recruitment feature each week which is always really interesting even if it’s not about the job you want to do and yeah so as far as getting a job, you don’t just want to work. You want to have fun. Events, all the activities you can do and of course we tell you how you can spend your money when you want to go traveling around Australia. That’s the best. So it’s for other cities, not just for Sydney. Yes. Absolutely.

Okay so if I am in the UK and I do want to check this out before I get here, is the new website the way to go? Absolutelytntdownunder.com. It is almost like a mash up of my space and facebook and utube. It’s like a community on-line for travelers so you can plan your itinerary, stay in touch with friends, you can meet other travelers, you can ask them about their travel experiences in Australia, stay in touch with people back home, with mom and dad if you want too. That’s always important. Yeah. That’s great.

Okay another worry for me would be if I was coming over would be accommodations. I mean how can TNT both on-line and in the magazine help me. Say I’ve already landed, crap I’ve got nowhere to stay, what do I do? Okay well if you’re looking for somewhere to stay tntdownunder.com has actually got a search engine for accommodations so you go in, you type what sort of accommodation you’re looking for whether it’s a shared flat, it’s backpackers, type of area you want it in whether it’s Sydney or Perth, Darwin or Hobart and it’ll bring up a list of accommodations and we’ve got a similar thing in the magazine. There’s a whole accommodation section going state by state. Okay. Great. That’s fantastic. So it’s really easy and a great resource to use. Full of everything that you possibly need. So you could confidently say that I could get around Australia on one of these magazines. Absolutely. That’s fantastic.

Okay. Anything else you want to add about TNT or your experiences with TNT? It’s just a lot of people don’t know about all the free stuff we have in TNT. Oh free stuff. Yeah like not only is the magazine free but we have over ,000 of travel prizes to give away attntdownunder.com every month as well as the magazine, holidays, concert tickets, sporting tickets, CDs, everything and a lot of people don’t know that. So yeah, we love to make people’s travel experience more fun without spending money. So this is a lot of budget accommodation, budget food, budget entertainment. Yep just tells you how to have a good time without blowing the budget. And your favorite section or segment in TNT? I like the features because they vary. A lot of them are written by the travelers so the travelers’ tales so they get sent in by people actually, you know people who may be watching this on your site right now so as they travel around, they might have had a unique experience and they want to tell us about it so they take some photos and send them in so it is always interesting to get someone else’s perspective on their trip around Australia. Absolutely.

When you get to London it is a bit of a nightmare trying to get a bank account and proving who you are and where you’re living so my suggestion to people in the UK who are going to come to Australia join up as a member of tntdownunder.com and then you can meet other travelers who have already come here and you can find the best way to do it instead of reading it in a book. People don’t always believe everything they read. They can actually chat with people who have already done it. They can give them advice on which banks to join but yeah it’s not so much a problem coming over here. Yeah that’s fantastic actually because that means there’s always those little stories here and there that people go on and don’t forget you need to know this, never written down. It’s never told so that’s a really great resource for people that are coming over, that have never spoken to someone in Australia or have traveled to Australia that can help you by the sounds of it. So how do they get to that chat room again? Just go towww.tntdownunder.com and sign up. Okay. That’s easy.

So for a free resource with everything you could possible need to know about Sydney, Australia for travelingwww.tntdownunder.com otherwise if you get here just check out any of the drop points for TNT Magazine and you’ll be set for your travels.