The NT the opportunities

I came to the NT over 20 years ago as a graduate architect with very little experience. Coming from Canberra I had dabbled in some measured drawings and that got me my first job I worked on a measured drawing of the Fannie Bay goal, it was fate, I walked off the street just when my skills were required, the opportunity. From that work I moved onto doing remote housing in Kakadu and on the gulf in North Queensland I vividly remember the opportunity of visiting some amazing country and taken to see rock art and sites not many people get to see.

With a change of government in the mid 1990’s one of the large projects in the office I was working on was stopped and 5 people lost their jobs that day. It was a cross roads for me and I seriously thought about moving away. I had travelled to Darwin in a Kombi and still had it but love for my now husband kept me in Darwin, and I was very lucky to obtain another job with a small firm.

The experience I obtained in a firm of only 2 or 3 was amazing over the next 5 years we worked on schools, defence, remote schools, remote housing, and interiors meant I had skills documenting projects of a wide variety of sizes.

My first career break came in 2000 with the birth of my first child and with another following less than a year and half later I did not work on anything other than renovating my own home. I did work part time for a year and then had another break for the birth of my third and fourth children. With more renovations to my own home I had little time for anything else with only 5 years between all of them. Never marry an architect and keep her pregnant she will be forever changing your house.

The opportunity to return to work part-time came in 2006 and I was able to step into a role very different from my earlier work, I was primarily doing contract administration. Working on site with builder really completed by architectural education I could see how buildings went together and this only assisted with my drawings and detailing. Over the years since then I have gradually increased my hours as the children grew and finally obtained my registration in 2009. I previously had had not desire to get registered by when my workplace was purchased by a larger firm they encouraged me. Since then I have been fortunate to work all over the NT on a huge variety of projects and am now running an office of 9.

We are very lucky in the Territory to have the opportunity to work on a huge variety of projects across climatic regions it is one of the benefits of smaller population and isolation. I can think of nothing worse than sitting in a concrete box all day drawing toilets or the like over, and over again. Encouraging graduates to travel to our perfect territory will not only benefit them and give them opportunity it will allow our local firms to thrive.

 

Jenny Culgan