Feb. 15, 2013, 10 p.m.
REFLECTING: Amelia Van Wyk travelled around Europe after volunteering in Russia.
Lachlan Morris, who spent the year concentrating on his band, The Guppies.
FOCUSED: Josh McLarty at the Bushfire Festival of the Arts, Swaziland.
WHOLE NEW HORIZON: Josh McLarty at Newlands Ravine near Capetown, South Africa.
GROWN UP: Josh McLarty spent his gap year in Africa where he underwent a different kind of education
A lot can happen in a year. In December 2011, I interviewed four school leavers with big plans. They were awaiting their Higher School Certificate results and, like an increasing number of young Australians, hoped to delay further study and enjoy a 12-month adventure.
For three of the group, that meant overseas travel. For Lachlan Morris, lead singer and guitarist with in-demand band The Guppies, his decision meant focusing on his music career and deferring his enrolment at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney to study a bachelor of contemporary performance.
For high achieving Merewether High student Josh McLarty, a year away from the books felt necessary after the intensity of the HSC.
"I've been at school for 13 years; it's time to have some freedom," he told me. He was hoping to be offered a place at the University of Newcastle to study medicine, which he wanted to defer for a year so he could travel to his birthplace, South Africa, and spend time with his father and extended family.
Amelia Van Wyk intended to defer university and juggle two part-time jobs for six months before heading to Europe. She was planning to meet two friends and travel as a group.
"In the mid-'70s in Australia only about 4 per cent of students deferred their studies for a year," says Professor Andrew Martin, of the University of Sydney's faculty of education and social work. "By the early 2000s, that had grown to 11 per cent and is now at about 15 per cent. We're moving to a sizeable number of students taking a year's break."
Research conducted by Martin suggests "gappers were a little more persistent and organised, and valued their education a little more compared to the kids who go to university straight from school".
"Deferred entry students are achieving a little more highly than students who came straight from school," he adds.
"They're a year older, they come back [from travelling] with a broadened skill set. They're at university because they've made a very sensible and rational decision to be there and the gap year has served its purpose - maybe not exactly as parents might have intended, but perhaps precisely as was needed."
Martin also suggests the nature of the gap year "probably means three out of four will end up doing something different to what they intended because of the reflection time they've had".
I caught up with three of the four teenagers featured in my original story - one could not be reached - to see if their experiences lived up to expectations.
Instead of celebrating schoolies after finishing his HSC, Josh McLarty, then 17, headed to the rugged western highlands of Papua New Guinea as a Rotary volunteer.
Clearly someone who doesn't mind getting off the beaten track and is eager to "give back", McLarty's heart was set on studying medicine - but not before he seized the opportunity to live a little.
The New Guinea trip had opened his eyes. After studying for nine hours a day in the weeks leading up to the HSC exams, hitting the books in 2012 was not a priority.
He was already in South Africa, where his father and extended family live, when he received his impressive mark of 98.25.
"It was a great day," remembers McLarty, who returned from his overseas jaunt a couple of weeks before Christmas. "I got my offer [to study medicine] and deferred. The year off has given me a nice break between school and uni, but I'm ready to get back into it now after being away."
While in South Africa, McLarty worked for his father's and aunt's television production companies, which enabled him to travel the length of the country, from Johannesburg to Cape Town. He also spent time at his father's newly constructed eco-lodge in Mozambique.
"I spent a few months there, really just taking the time off," he says. "It's only really opening now so it was still under construction the entire time I was there, but that was good because it was really nice and peaceful.
"Mozambique was really different to South Africa; it is still very remote and traditional. I was lucky to get a real insight into the culture, especially the music side. I helped film the Timbila Festival, which was really interesting. The town usually only has a couple of thousand people, and there were probably about 10,000 people there."
The dramatic contrast in the lives of the locals surprised McLarty.
"Literally a few kilometres apart, you can see more wealth than here in Australia and just down the road, such poverty. It's astounding really that that can happen; it's really eye-opening."
There were moments of homesickness and he missed his 15-year-old sister Melody, but ultimately McLarty embraced the opportunity to experience life in a different country.
"I feel like I've grown up. I feel I needed a bigger view of the world in general before focusing on uni and I got a really diverse view of that part of the world. I never really grasped the entirety of the differences between here and there until last year. I got to know people in the community rather than just being someone passing through."
Since coming home he has been busy catching up with friends, the majority of whom already have a year of university behind them, but McLarty isn't bothered.
"It's [gap year] a different type of education, but it's worth it, even if it was a little weird coming home because I did so much, but nothing here has really changed at all."
In the first half of 2011, Amelia Van Wyk juggled two jobs - five days a week at a sport store and up to four nights a week at a Honeysuckle restaurant.
Her goal? Enough money to fund an overseas trip. Even though she had been offered a place at the University of Newcastle to study PE teaching, the teenager decided to defer for a year so she could travel to Europe, starting in Russia.
Van Wyk first visited the country as a five-year-old with her family and fellow members of the Hunter Christian Church who volunteered in a children's summer camp outside St Petersburg. She made friends with many of the orphans.
"There's a lot of broken families in Russia," the former St Philip's Christian College student told me in December 2011. "The kids have a need for someone to appreciate them."
That trip and subsequent visits broadened Van Wyk's view of the world and created an appetite for travel. When we first spoke, she intended to volunteer in a camp for three weeks before embarking on a four-month European holiday with friends.
"It's [camp] is very close to my family's heart and I wanted to do something to help before I went off travelling," she says, explaining why she began her gap year trip there. "From Russia, I went to Germany where I met up with friends and did a big loop through Spain, France, England and Ireland. We caught Eurorail for most of it. The whole trip was incredible."
While she missed her family - she stayed in contact via Skype and Facebook - and her mother, Leigh, worried about her, Van Wyk has no regrets about taking a year off from study.
"It made me a lot more independent and I grew up a lot," she says. "I just loved every minute of it. It was incredible and above and beyond what I imagined. My favourite place was Spain; it was so beautiful and we spent time at the beach."
She wasn't ready to knuckle down and study straight after completing her HSC.
"It was so good not to have to think about study and work," she says, adding quickly, "but I'm really looking forward to it now."
Since returning in October, she has resumed part-time work and is excited about the beginning of a new stage of life at university.
"I am ready to focus and learn," she says. "Having that break was really important to get me motivated."
Fans of The Guppies could be forgiven for thinking that the trio had taken an extended break after their success in Triple J's Unearthed High competition in August, 2011. Apart from some Sydney gigs, a set at the Peats Ridge Festival and a recent outing at the Cambridge Hotel as the support act for You Am I, the bulk of the band's activity has been happening behind the scenes.
Since deferring his studies at the Australian Institute of Music in 2012, lead singer and guitarist Lachlan Morris has been focused on finishing an EP, which will be released in the first half of this year. Band mates Angus Geraghty and James Hodgett were completing year 12 last year and will now face the same dilemma Morris experienced: if, and how, to juggle study with the demands of the band.
"I know it seems as though we have been off the radar for a while," says the 19-year-old from his family's Georgetown home, "but writing a good bunch of material, getting the live show together and just feeling strong as a band really takes time to get right."
That doesn't mean that Morris hasn't had moments when he doubted his decision. A couple of times he questioned whether he should be studying instead of writing and finessing songs for the EP. When the institute called him recently to check if he was taking up his place in 2013, he felt a moment's hesitation before declining. "It's just one of those things you feel every now and then; am I making the right decision?," says the former Lambton High student.
"A lot of people think you need a fall-back plan, but I hate the idea that the band hadn't gotten anywhere and I'd had to 'fall back'. I'd much rather know that playing music is my only option and I have to make it work. More than that, I want to make it work."
Morris is adamant that the past year has been invaluable in establishing the band; they've had to hire a manager, record songs, select artwork for the EP, fine-tune their performance.
It has taken focus and dedication, which would not have been possible if he'd had to also fulfill study demands. He reckons he has also matured in the past year.
"Doing the band full-time has made me more confident," he says. "Just to look back and see everything we've achieved through the year and knowing that this is just the start of things to come if we keep this kind of intensity. Also, it was a really good break from studying and I feel much more relaxed."
Morris, who has the support of his parents and grandparents, has only positive things to say about the gap year experience.
"I was able to get a lot of writing done [he had 50 songs to choose from for the EP] and get the band on the right track.
"If someone is as passionate as I am about something, there really isn't any reason not to pursue it."
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