Maybe you just finished college. Maybe you were recently laid off. Or you are having a quarter life crisis and are in search of adventure. Or perhaps you want to brush up on your Aussie slang and learn how to drink with the best of them. Whatever your reason, if you are wondering where you can go to travel, explore and work along the way to help fund your adventures, you should probably consider heading to Australia. Not only will you be able to enjoy the added benefit of being able to speak English, but Australia is also the perfect place to enjoy longer-term travel. With a great backpacker infrastructure (great hostels, lots of camper vans to rent, buses and more), traveling up and down the East Coast of Australia is both beautiful and easy. Plus, with Australia recently opening up their Working Holiday Visa program to Americans, now may just be the perfect time to pack your bags and live it up Down Under for awhile.
>>Looking for more information? Check out my article on Working Holiday Visas in Australia and How it All Works
When I hear the word “visa,” bureaucratic nightmares and loads of paperwork are the first things that pop into my mind. However, getting a Working Holiday Visa (WHV) in Australia is really not difficult at all. Much unlike my experience when I applied for a French student visa and had to appear with piles of paperwork and stacks of documents at the consulate, the WHV application is all online, takes less than an hour and does not require waiting in any lines or wading through pages of fine print.
In fact, I spoke with several working holidayers during my recent trip to Queensland, Australia whole told me they were approved for the visa in less than 24 hours. The application costs $230 AUD (about $210 USD as of May 5, 2010).
>>Start the application now
Who is the visa for?
(From the Australia Department of Immigration web site):
Agricultural Work
If you’d rather spend your time cattle wrangling and tractor driving than picking bananas during your time in Australia, there is also plenty of agricultural work to be found on the country’s many cattle stations. With vast tracks of land, big cattle stations and a small population, there are always farms and ranches looking for workers.
If you are like me and lack all skills necessary to work on a cattle station or farm—that is you can’t ride a horse, muster sheep on motorbike, build fences or drive tractors—it doesn’t mean you still couldn’t get a job working doing some or all of these things. Luckily, there are programs that can not only help train you up in farm work, but also help you land a job when you are done with your training.
VisitOz has a 5-day farm work crash course for those who want to learn the skills they’ll need to land a job on farms and cattle stations around Australia. Located about 250 km from Brisbane, the Springbrook farm outside of the tiny bush town of Goomeri (pop. 400) is the training center for VisitOz participants hoping to land a job. The farm, which is owned by a Scots couple named Dan and Joanna Burnet, raises beef cattle along with teaching backpackers and working holidayers basic farm skills.
The training course for VisitOz at Springbrook farm teaches:
The work is certainly hard physical labor in most cases, but if you’ve dreamed of being able to work mustering cattle on an outback farm, this is certainly a good option. The program is not free. Enrolling in the training program costs $1,990 AUD (a little over $1,500 USD), but that costs not only includes your 5-day training, but includes a guaranteed job placement (if you successfully complete training), help with travel arrangements, 9 total days of accommodation (5 days on the farm, a night in Brisbane and a 3 nights on a jet-lag recovery trip to Rainbow Beach off the coast), and your meals while staying on the farm.
There is also something to be said about having a plan and a almost guaranteed job waiting for you when you arrive in Australia. The peace of mind and learning how to motorbike (my favorite part of the day I spent on Springbrook) is probably well worth the price.
Jobs pay between $250-$1500 per week and almost always include room and board. Plus, since many of these jobs are located in remote areas in the Outback, you’ll take away almost all of that money, meaning just a few month of work could fund travels for the rest of the year.
>>Find out more about the VisitOz program
Hospitality/Tourism and other Jobs
In addition to helping place workers on cattle stations and farms doing agricultural work, VisitOz can also help place workers in hospitality type jobs. Other jobs you can get through VisitOz include:
If you choose to set out and get a job on your own, you can also find jobs in bars/restaurants around Australia. While you may have to work a bit harder to get a job placement and it may take a little longer, with perseverance, you can definitely score a job doing something other than fruit picking and agricultural work.
If you are an ocean lover or sailor (or wish you were), you can also get a job working on some kind of chartered boat. When I went Sailing in the Whitsunday Islands, I met working holidayers who had scored jobs as cooks and assistants on the boats that tour the islands.
