Christine Bond has always enjoyed a challenge. Born in New Zealand, she headed for Australia on a Russian Cruise ship in 1974 with the aim of getting a job and saving up to travel the world.
With a background in the catering and hospitality industries, she eventually decided to temporarily put the travel spending on hold and work her way through university as a mature age student. In the early 1980’s, armed with a BA in Psychology and Mass Communications from Macquarie University, Christine embarked on a career in radio journalism.
She says she fell in love with radio when she started volunteering on a student radio station in Sydney. Following graduation she worked as a news reporter and program producer for the Macquarie Network and the ABC. She continued her travels around Australia with various roles in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and finally to Darwin in 1984.
In 1991 the travel bug struck again and Christine embarked on a two year journey sailing on a 38ft yacht from Darwin to West Timor and on through Indonesia to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. A short stay ashore in Phuket to help set up a yacht and fishing charter business for a Thai company ended up as a eight year stay, delivering opportunities to sail, travel and experience life in South East Asia.
Christine also began freelance writing while in Asia and contributed as Phuket correspondent to a number of Singapore and Bangkok based publications and had articles appear in travel magazines for the Europe and American markets.
She returned to Darwin in 2000 and began working for Tourism NT where she took on a variety of marketing, media/PR and corporate roles including as copywriter, tour guide for media groups, media manager and corporate communications advisor. Christine joined the Charles Darwin University Corporate Communications team as Media Manager on 26 April 2006.