A forced change of plan…

Well, as some of our recent blog posts have outlined we’ve been struggling to find work out here. We have been doing more research and speaking to people within our house who are in the same or similar positions to ourselves. The reality is simple, and unfortunate, our 417 Working Holiday Visa (WHV) is a the bottom of a long list of visas entitling people to work out here and the only use it has is to enable us to apply for casual work. Professional firms do not hire, or at the least are reluctant to hire, people on a 417 WHV – the snagging point is that you can only work for one company for six months. So if you are thinking of coming to Australia and working for a professional firm, don’t get a 417 WHV. If you can secure work with a company before you come here then you can come on a 417 WHV because it is only temporary until the next visa kicks in. People may say to us, well you can still work casual jobs for six months until something comes along or words to that effect, but the reality is that it won’t, at least not for the both of us. We could secure temping jobs in February, but what’s the point if we know we can’t get work in our field on our visa? There would be no long term benefit for us, and in truth, working six months in a casual job like fast food etc would probably look worse on our CV and be harder to justify the validity or benefit of such employment. People can say what they want about our decision making but we didn’t come to Australia to work in KFC for six months – if they’d even employ us!

Secondly, the next visa up from ours, the Sponsored 457 Visa has its limitations too. It lasts four years and in order to qualify for residency (if that’s what you are after) you have to work for the same company for two years. Our house mate has eight years experience in a senior programme development role in South Africa but out here he is only able to obtain work as a junior programmer despite having the skills and knowledge of a senior programmer. His salary reflects his lower position. He came here on a 457 Visa and after nine months at one company and nine months at another, he is looking for work in order to obtain residency. A 457 Visa is higher up the food chain than ours, and there are plenty of people on that visa, and he is struggling to find work despite IT being in demand because a company has to agree to take on your sponsorship. The reality is, unless you are a resident you are at the mercy of employers who will offer you lower salaries and positions than you would otherwise obtain in your own country.

Unfortunately, the reality is that we cannot compete in this job market because employers will simply not employ us on our visa and we don’t want to remain for somewhere for six months doing casual fast-food jobs, or looking daily on Gumtree for casual work and living hand-to-mouth due to the cost of living out here. It’s not worth it. I calculated that, if I or Nicola alone were to obtain a job on $48,000 a year, after tax, rent, transport and food we would have less than $200 per week. Which basically equates to us scrimping and saving to save up $200 a week, that’s without treating ourselves to any treats, or trips or anything that could bring us any enjoyment. Why live 10,000 miles from home, working in a job that you know is going nowhere and which only allows us to survive in Australia? Sure, if we both found temp work in February then we’d have more disposable income and we could have a better standard of living, but trust us, the standard of living out here is not much better than the UK. The only thing that is better is the weather. Six months work out here would leave us with a few thousand dollars between us, six months work in the UK (we did have the advantage of living at home) allowed us to save a few thousand pounds each and come out here. We have seen rental properties in the Swansea area for £400 to £500 per month. You have to pay 2/3 to all of that per week out here for a place to yourself. We have been surprised and disappointed with the cost of living.

Within a month of arriving out here we had changed our plan to stay here for one year only, work for six months and then travel (the year would include time in Thailand, NZ, Fiji and USA). We have had to change that unfortunately, not by choice, but by circumstance. Regrettably, we have had to book flights back to the UK. We simply cannot afford to live in Australia. But, sod’s law, the day we booked our flights I had an offer for a job interview. Albeit the job was cold calling trying to sell products to people via telephone so it was not a job I would have applied for in the UK but that’s the way it is out here; cold calling jobs are one of the staple jobs for backpackers. That’s not why we came here. We came here to experience working in our fields in a different country, not any old unrelated jobs in another country for little money – we could do that in the UK but be surrounded by friends and family. We want to buy things, but we can’t. We live off beans on toast, cereal and pasta. A lower standard of living than when I was in University – I’d never have thought this would be the case before leaving. I spent an equivalent sum in three months at Uni (including rent) as we have spent in three weeks here (including rent).

What we have decided to do, is to limit our expenditure over the Christmas and New Year period (again not something we wanted – to have no money to spend at Christmas and New Year and not be able to afford to buy each other gifts but there you go) and fly to New Zealand in early January. We’ll spend three weeks traveling both North and South islands before flying to Fiji for a week. We have booked a 4* hotel with a private beach in Fiji for less than a week in a run down Sydney hostel…says it all. So, instead of arriving back in the UK as planned around August 2013, we’ll be arriving home 3 February 2013. Not ideal, but practical. Nicola has planned and booked an amazing itinerary across New Zealand (I provided moral support when she was booking stuff) and we have a week in paradise in Fiji. So life’s no too bad!! We’ve just changed our plan from working and traveling to just traveling. We will have been to all the places we wanted to visit (bar a few things in Australia) and we’ll end up having if nothing else a four and a half month holiday so we should really lighten up and stop being so hard on ourselves.

We thought we’d keep you posted of our plans and our expected return date but some of you may be more disappointed than us to see us return so soon! 

P.S This post and all other posts are my opinion and are not meant to cause offence to anyone.