[kiasam111]

We've been in Australia now for 4 seasons, and it's definitely been a challenge. As the above poster said, travel costs are ENOURMOUS! We spent of $100,000 this year to get to Hawaii and St Louis. Luckily, we have amazing sponsors who help us through this.

One of the problems with FRC in Australia is that build season starts in the middle of our 6 week summer break. Our team meets at a University, which is open all year round, but for teams based at schools, they would only have 3 weeks to build a robot if they were to travel to the US to compete. For this reason, we started an off-season event, The Duel Down Under, where teams could get a kit and build their robots for a competition in July. This meant that school teams could start as soon school started in February. This system was quite successful, and we had 13 teams at the tournament this year. An off-season event (if you have enough teams; we ran it with 5 last year) is a great way to show your country what FIRST and FRC are all about, without having to run an actual regional.

Like in Israel, we have FIRST Australia here. FIRST Australia takes care of all the FIRST programs in Australia, and also ran the Asia Pacific Invitational tournament this year. As well as the Duel Down Under, we ran an FTC Invitational and an FLL Open Championship. This gave the FTC teams in Australia the opportunity to see some of the best teams (quite literally, we had 2 world champs there!) in the world. <tangent>We also set a world record for an FTC score, with 1028! It broke the scoreboard!</tangent>

Like in Israel, we also have some great support from the government. When 3132 started, we approached companies for sponsorship that already sponsored American teams. For example, we have Altium, BAE Systems, National Instruments and Google on board, all of whom are big sponsors in the US. That was something that definitely helped us get started.

One of the huge advantages we had when 3132 was started, was that we had a family from 2342 come over and start the team. This meant that we had guidance all through the build season as to how things worked, and was a large factor in ensuring the long term sustainability and growth of the team.

We also used our surplus budget from a couple of years ago to start a microbank. We loaned money to potential teams and they used that to buy a kit to build a robot. They then payed us back, and that money was loaned out to more teams, and so the process continues. 7 of the teams at the Duel Down Under were products of the microbank. This money was also provided by corporate sponsors.

FLL is also quite big in Australia, and we have 2 regionals and the National tournament here in Sydney. FLL was already succesful in Australia before 3132 and FIRST Australia, but it has since grown =)

Hope that helps =)