Brit man who bagged 'best job ever' calls his work 'busiest in the world'

Melbourne, Apr 25 (ANI): Ben Southall, who was hired by Queensland Tourism for the "best job ever", has revealed that it was more than he anticipated.

The 37-year-old's assignment, inspiring the jealousy of thousands the world over, was to "work" in the idyllic Whitsunday Islands for six months.

Southall beat 35,000 other applicants to set up camp on Hamilton Island in 2009, which was great, except he worked non-stop, broke up with his girlfriend and encountered a poisonous jellyfish.

"It should have been called, 'the busiest job in the world'," News.com.au quoted him as telling BBC.

According to him, the job was more of a job than he'd anticipated because writing between jet-ski trips and diving on the Great Barrier Reef sounds awfully exhausting.

"At the time I saw the advert, I thought it would be like living on a desert island like Tom Hanks in Castaway.

"It was after I won when I did a ten-minute slot on the Oprah Winfrey show which was broadcast in 140 countries that I thought, 'This is pretty big now'," he said.he cheeky Brit's life of hard graft was compounded by a relationship breakdown. He's since found new love, and he'll marry Sophee McPhee in November.

Southall's biggest gripe with the trip was a potentially fatal brush with an irukandji jellyfish, a serious hazard for holiday goers on the Barrier Reef.

Life has since settled down though, and he now calls himself an honorary Australian with a new life in Brisbane.

"Looking back on the past three years, I didn't expect to stay out here. I've always travelled and had wanderlust. This is the longest time I've stayed in one place," he added. (ANI)