how did I do it???
Well I started learning to fly on Groote Eylandt...a group of us hired a plane from Gove Aero club...after 6 months and 13 hours I went solo...not the best way to do it so I saved up my pennies and every six months when they let me out I went down to the sunnie coast and did steep turns over Noosa Heads and spotted for white pointers while I did my licence. After 18 months I had my PPL. Then won a job (bridgeworks) and spent 94 days working...one stint was six weeks straight...my partner would take half of the crew and have smoko/lunch etc while I kept working with the other half of the crew...then we would go for smoko when they came back...
At the end I came out with about $40K so I took 12 months off and completed my CPL (a bit cheaper back then...still all relative I suppose)...then went bush...arrived at the 3 ways in the NT flipped a coin and went south to Alice Springs...Hangar rat for about 3 months before doing scenics around ayers rock and olgas...
25 years later and now working in PNG...F100s - Dash 8s
Easy once you know how!!! Just don't ask me to do it again...when I think about it now I'm glad I was young and naive...helps if you believe in yourself enough to back yourself
Good luck
p.s the mistakes I made in my career were all mine...but it's been one hell of a journey...even chucked in flying a few years ago for a return to the tools and loved every minute of that too...