Wednesday Wonderings – What about work?

Wondering about how much work there is to travel Australia?  We get asked this a bit.

We find that there is a lot of work in rural areas for us.  The best way to find work often seems to be talking to people.  We generally find that there just aren’t enough people willing to go out to some of these rural or remote places to fill all the jobs.

I seem to see a lot on the internet about people working online to travel.  Most of the people we meet travelling Australia, and ourselves, stop and work as we travel.  We do this – we work for a while, then travel until the money dries up, then work again for awhile.  Doing this, I think we’ve ended up working about half the time and travelling half the time.

Working isn’t just about financing the trip.  It is also about keeping up our skills.  Even more importantly, it also means that we get to know some small towns better.  We feel part of the community, and we get to know the area and the town much better than if we just passed through.

Working Legally

We’re Australian citizens, so we didn’t have to go through the process of applying for visas.  I’m not sure how simple or complicated it is, but I have a feeling that probably depends on what category you apply.  It’s got a lot more detail than I could go into here, so I’d suggest you have a look at the government’s immigration website.  Some visas are just holiday visas, others are working visas.  You’d need to have a look there to be able to

Finding Work

We find the best approach is usually talking to people.  As a tradesman, Jarrad has often been asked to do work if he mentions what he does.  There’s a lot of work in rural areas for suitably qualified tradesmen!  As a pharmacist, there’s often a lot of work around in rural areas but we have to go to the work rather than getting it in the town I’m in at the time.  I usually get work through a pharmacy locum agency (such as Pharmacy SOS), or word of mouth.

We have used seek.com.au to find work for Jarrad in rural areas.  He originally got his job on the mines up in Roxby Downs through seek.com.au .

We’ve met a lot of young people in particular who follow the Harvest Trail. The government maintains the website to provide information on where the work is at the time.  This is often labouring work or fruit picking, and is almost always temporary.

WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) is another option, but you have to buy the directory/book first before you know how many of those are potentially suitable.  Each one has there own different interests and requirements.  I’m not really convinced that there’d be enough to make it worthwhile for a family … I mean, these offer accomodation and food in return for work.  I’m thinking that most of them don’t want to play host to a whole tribe, of whom only one or two will provide useful labour.  But I could be wrong because I haven’t looked in to it.

Is It Hard For Travellers To Find Work?

We’ve never found it hard.  We speak good English, and are willing to move to where the work is.  As Australian citizens, we don’t have to worry about work permits.  As such, it’s always been easy.  I think it may be harder to find work if we weren’t willing to move to the town where the work is.

Accomodation While We’re Working

Small towns often provide accomodation for pharmacists.  That’s fantastic for us – we park in the driveway of the accomodation, and then we can plug the campervan into a power point, and we can refill the water tanks.  That means I can have a shower every day before work and not worry.

When Jarrad works, accomodation is not provided.  On the mines, he was fine because a requirement of BHP was that all the employees showered each day before they left site.  However, we had a water tank that we paid to fill every month so that we could have enough water.  Usually that is the main issue – water.  It’s one thing to be camping alone in a national park with having only one shower in the week – it’s another thing to be going to work looking presentable with only one shower a week.  We still try and avoid campervan parks, though.  We’ve found that quite a few of the free or low cost campsites have enough water to at least provide the person working with a daily shower.

When I worked in Bendigo (a large regional city in Victoria) we stayed at the showgrounds.  For $10 a night we got to plug into water.  That was absolutely perfect – particularly when a circus came and camped next to us for the two weeks.  The kids got to play with the circus kids.  The kids scored free tickets to the circus one Saturday night.  And we got to wake up to the sound of the lions roaring, and watch the ponies walking around their yard.  Made for a good time for all while I worked there – happy kids, a relaxed, happy Dad and a Mum who got to use her skills for a few weeks.

I’ve also worked in an Aboriginal Health Service.  I found it to be an incredible and eye-opening experience.  I worked alongside some wonderful people, and saw first hand some of the issues and challenges.  It was one of the most rewarding experiences, both professionally and personally.  I visited remote Aborginal communities (and even got invited to go back and stay with them with the kids and Jarrad).  I learnt a lot more about Aboriginal culture and society.  It was sometimes confronting, but always eye-opening = from the shock of seeing and smelling a whole kangaroo cooking on the camp-fire to the shock of finding out that the life expectancy of an Aboriginal male is 48 years.

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Amy and Jarrad

Travelling Australia in a campervan since 2009 with our four children aged 4, 7, 10, and 11. We are a family living on the road. Stopping to work in rural and remote towns as we need more money, we love this lifestyle. The four kids are homeschooled as we work our way slowly around Australia.

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