Full Name: Vanessa Sabatini
Position: Visitor services Senior Consultant
Location: Dunsborough-Busselton
How long have you been part of the team: 3 years
Favourite part of the job: Having an office overlooking the ocean is not too bad..and being able to let French tourists struggle and torture the English language for a while, before starting speaking French…More seriously, the part of the job that I prefer is being able to transmit the knowledge and passion to visitors of this unique region I am proud to live in for the last 4 years.And If you guys ever struggle with Dutch, French,Italian tourists…I can check them out for you…
Tell us something about yourself that not many people would know?
I used to be Ballet dancer and Singer…oh, and not so many people know that I actually can be very funny…
Regarding the ‘ Restaurant day’ and other events that I have been involved with, it all began with a multicultural group that I wanted to start. To make the long story short Jaquie Happ , Culture officer at the city gave me her support and I was able to organize Harmony day in March this year,(National multicultural day held in March every year all over Australia) at the Dunsborough football fields, we had a street food market, with local people volunteering, migrants from Brasil, Kenya, Holland, Italy, Germany etc cooking , and a multi cultural soccer game was played, we had so many players that we had to split the game in 3 sets of games, we had awesome responses from the locals and tourists and it was a great day… The recent restaurant day was a first for me, and an international non for profit event originating from Finland( we just ask for donations to cover some costs), very popular in Europe, basically anyone can open a restaurant for one day on a certain date every year…for this matter,our event appears on the international website map and is advertised worldwide…My friend Naiche and had the idea of a ‘Winter souls warming soup’ restaurant day…and created the whole theme based on this…it is definitely a community oriented event we wanted to create, a first of many more to come…
Detail your perfect Margaret River Region day: Go 4wd at Kilkarnup , hoping to see whales , but instead help digging a group of Japanese tourists that got stuck on the tracks with a shopping trolley…(Aussie slang for a small car from what I have heard?)…well, that is exactly what I did last Sunday!