Catherine Gordon admits she wasn’t necessarily at the top of her class at school, but a year spent in a wild and remote spot in Victoria’s high country taught her one of life’s great lessons.

“You didn’t have to be the brightest, but you could still be extremely successful,” says Gordon, who loved her time at Geelong Grammar School’s Timbertop campus so much she spent her gap year after her final exams working there as an assistant and then returned after university to work as an outdoor education teacher.