hi leajoy Gumtree jobs is a good starting point for casual work. Often farm jobs offer meals as well as small wage so living expenses are kept to a minimum.
-- Edited by villatranquilla on Tuesday 30th of April 2013 06:32:55 PM
__________________
Jenny and Barry
2009 Roma Elegance / 2013 Colorado. Permanent travellers 2011-2015 now just travel for 4-6 mths
I am looking for some answers to a lot of questions so hopefully you can help me with some or all of the questions. We are seriously thinking of giving up work in the first quarter of 2014. We have a campertrailer and are busy sorting out the 4WD before we head off. We are not sure how long we will be gone for at this stage as we keep coming back to the same questions. If we go for many months a bit of work along the way would top up the coffers a bit and we would enjoy the challenge that it may offer us. Husband is a tradie and very handy and I have worked in customer service all my working life. Now to the questions:
1. The house - we won't be selling our house but have considered house sitters. We live in a small rural town and are not sure if house sitters are interested in staying in this area for too long as it can get quite cold over winter. Any thoughts on how to go about this (I have looked at websites and on here) Very nervous about letting "anyone" into the house for a long period and we are very proud house owners. Do they pay the electricty/gas etc if it is over a long period and do we negotiate this?
2. How do we find work? I have looked at all the websites I can find. Is it easy to find work? We don't want back breaking work like picking strawberries otherwise not too fussy.
3. Volunteering on stations - is this hard to do? Have found some websites again but not sure how hard it is to match up where we would be useful and if we would find it a valuable experience.
Any thoughts or sharing of your experiences appreciated as we are just round in circles. I guess part of it is being game to take that step to leave work!
We obtained housesitters mostly via Aussie House Sitters website. People wanting to housesit have to pay to register on that site, which tends to sort out the quality a bit. We usually looked for mature aged couples. People wanting to find a housesitter do not pay to use that site - have a look at it. Always carefully check references given. You may find sitters who would take on a longer period, even where it gets cold. We did - for Melbourne in winter!
Asking around - word of mouth - can also sometimes work. We have had several different sitters, for times ranging from 5 months to 2.5 years. The only problem one we had was one obtained at short notice (when sitter had to cancel due to family emergency) from a seniors website where they didn't have to pay to register. Was a solo person. Refs checked out well, but unfortunately in the year or so since last reference, person had developed personal problems that ended up causing us some hassles.
Our sitters always paid gas and electricity usage and calls made on our landline.
Jobs can often be found whilst travelling, rather than lined up beforehand. Many tourism related businesses up north look for temporary staff in the busy season. It often doesn't pay them to advertise, so they hire from drop-ins, word of mouth etc. Once you get into one of these, you will find out about others, get offers etc. Tradies are in big demand in the more remote places. Some of these offer keep as well as a basic wage.
Our first travelling jobs were offered whilst we were paying guests at a remote tourism operation. They asked if we'd help out for a couple of weeks that turned into a couple of months. We'd never done that type of work before. Got offers from other places, while we were there, for later seasons.
Worked in packing shed for mango harvest. Got that one from ad in a local paper (Townsville). Got another mango packing season lined up from ad tacked up in caravan park laundry at Howard Springs near Darwin. Mango packing/sorting is ok work.
Used to be quite easy here in Qld. but backpackers have severley undercut locals as they'll work for half the pay. If you can drive a truck there is usually work in the RACQ breakdown field. Very difficult here in the Cairns area for the last few years. Might be more around the Townsville area.
__________________
You don't know what you've got till it's gone so I gave it all away to see what I had.
try grain corp, awb, or cotton gins. IGA, especially weekends when the young ones don't want to work, but don't stay on the coast, go inland, when you have a kitty full you can go back to the coast. See Hop Trading on Thurs Island always looking for staff.
Thanks everyone for the links and wendv for the comprehensive reply. Always good to here it from someone who has "been there, done that" - much appreciated and it has eased our concerns. I guess until we get a bit closer and ready to definitely go with our plans we won't know what is out there until then. Will try and source a house sitter locally if we can. We had the perfect one lined up but she bought her own house - damn!
I am sure I will be back with more questions as we get closer to working out how and when we are going to take off and in the meantime check in here on a regular basis to pick up any little hints to help us as well.
