Regional Work… the bane of my life. Eighty eight days in the middle of nowhere, $350 a week, working six days a week. The things we immigrants will do to stay in a country.

In order to qualify for a second year visa in Australia, you are required to complete a three month stint of ‘regional work’ in rural Australia. It must fit under one of the following headings: plant and animal cultivation/fishing and pearling/tree farming and felling/mining or construction.

I decided to get mine over with as quickly as possible, so one month in to my new life in Oz I packed my bags and moved an hour south of Perth to a place called Serpentine, to sweat it out on a breaking yard (horse racing stables).

The ‘town’ of Serpentine was to be my living hell…The kind of place where it’s so small that you don’t have to name the shops they can just be called exactly what they are: General Store, Pharmacy, Tavern etc…

Possums clawed the roof above our heads at night, ants sucking on every spillage and dropped crumb, young horses freshly separated from their mothers head-butted, bit, kicked, cornered and ran at me daily.

Frogs, huntsman spiders, hundreds of daddy long legs, cockroaches, mice, brazen flies that don’t budge when you try and scatter them shacked up with us in the on site accommodation – an old farmhouse with patio doors that wouldn’t close and more cobwebs than a haunted house. And a constant threat of bushfires when the temperature racked up.

There was no wifi and bad reception but we got our daily dose of entertainment from our housemates, exes who regularly pulled out knifes, machetes and the odd samurai sword on each other. Once even a bottle of tequila stuffed with tissue paper ready to set alight and throw into the other ones room. Rife with racism and backwards thinking, there was no point in trying to reason with them, so I set back and enjoyed the show.

The days passed slowly, monotonously in the pressing heat, our routine 4am starts shoveling shit, feeding horses, filling water buckets, on repeat. Disappointed by the realization that this dream of mine of living the rural life in a cabin in the woods may not be all its cracked up to be.

Still I had a roof over my head and food in my belly. Once again as in Vietnam, I am learning to appreciate the finer things in life. Speeding down the dirt tracks in the Ute with the windows down and the music blaring. Head lolling back at night to take in the vast sky with so many stars you cannot fathom it. Driving to the beach to eat fish and chips and watch the sunset. The isolation, having time on your hands to see how you cope on your own, daytime napping in an air-conditioned room, lessons learned, character built and buffered. Muscles toned. New cuts, bruises and scars to add to my collection – all souvenirs of my experiences.

Sharing a room with an English girl, a gem of a human to endure it with, to share my woes. Through our shared experience of this place we are bonded, a friend for life. Our daily excursions were the only thing keeping our spirits from collapsing. The falls, the dam, the lookout, the Buddhist monastery, all the burritos… flashes of goodness in the midst of all the chaos.

Apparently I was one of the lucky ones, since finishing tales have trickled through of people stuck hours away from civilisation out in the outback with no towns or cities in range to escape to. The stories of fruit picking, labouring in the hot sun from dawn until dusk, been paid $9 per bucket picked but when it takes four hours to fill just one.

So once again I succumb to nostalgia… was it really that bad?

You have to do it if you want to stay in the country (unless you can get sponsored) so I’ll let you be the judge of that…

 

Here is what you need to know:

Basically you need to do 88 days/3 months work at an approved location that is classed as regional Australia. Jobs are listed on Gumtree but ask around, check Facebook groups such as Backpackers Jobs In Australia, do your research. The most common jobs going are fruit picking or packing, farms and nannying. If you can find full-time work, the 88 days includes your days off. So it’s three months’ full-time work or just count up your 88 days if it’s part-time. You can do it all one with one employer or several, the choice is yours. My advice is to try and get it done as soon as you land, it takes the pressure off and you can enjoy the rest of your stay. Also you can afford to be a bit pickier because you have time on your side. I wish you the very best of luck with it, please do let me know how it goes!