Five female students from Carinya measured up a future in surveying last Wednesday with a special day trip to Sydney's Hyde Park in the lead up to International Women's Day.
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In NSW just three percent of all registered surveyors are female. One of those 29 women is the first ever female Surveyor General Narelle Underwood, who was on hand to launch the new initiative to bring more females into STEM industries.
For Carinya year 11 students Felicity Roach, Ella Fotheringham, Hanna Griffiths, Chelsea Willey and year 12 student Danielle Burrows the opportunity to further explore the occupation was hard to resist.
The five students were shouted flights by the NSW Consulting Surveyors, and joined 55 other female students from regional NSW at the Anzac Memorial for three activities, lunch and a range of guest speakers.
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For Chelsea Willey the day "really opened my eyes" to the possibilities involved in surveying.
"I hadn't really thought of it as a career option before, but I would definitely like to look into it further now," she said.
"I already have an interest in mathematics, but really want a career where I can work indoors and outdoors - get out in nature and the environment and really have a look."
The Anzac memorial holds a special place for the profession following the opening of the new wing which showcases hundreds of soil samples collected by surveyors from all 1700 locations WWI enlistees gave as their home address.
"We did a big tour of the memorial which was amazing, and then we did three activities measuring heights with a theodolite and trigonometry, then measured Olympic sports events like discus and javelin, and then we had an activity with the What3Words app," Chelsea said.
Fellow student Chelsea Griffiths already had some prior knowledge of the industry through her father Stephen, a civil engineer.
"It would be a very stable job with high demand, which means higher pay, in what seems like a really supportive industry," she said.
"Dad has definitely encouraged me, but I think I would prefer to go into surveying more than engineering.
"It seems a lot broader - there are a lot of different avenues of work available."
