#regionalwork

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” – Masanobu Fukuoka

In order to secure a second year on your 417 Working Holiday Visa in Australia, you must undertake 88 days of regional work. If you’re lucky enough to be working a 38 hour week and not working as a casual worker, you are lucky that your days off count towards your 88 days. Otherwise, you’ll have to count up every day you work. It can be hard to know where to even begin when it comes to your regional work. Here are my top tips to try to help make it go as smoothly as possible.

Before You Go

Post Codes Make sure where you plan to do your regional work is in the correct post codes. Only certain areas count as “regional Australia”, so try to avoid making an easily avoidable mistake. You can find the regional Australia post code list here.

Approved Industries Ensue that the work you are undertaking is in an approved industry. The most popular job for backpackers is usually fruit picking as it generally requires no prior experience and you don’t need any qualifications, but the approved industry list also includes plant & animal cultivation, fishing & pearling, tree farming & felling, mining and construction. Don’t forget, woofing is no longer allowed.

Employers ABN When you find an employer, it is best to make sure they have an ABN. If not, they may not be able to sign off on your regional work.

Pay Rates When you get offered a role, you should make sure that they are offering you award rates. This is the minimum you are required to be earning in order to gain your second year visa. You can find the list of award rates here and more about your rights and entitlements here.

Avoid Scams As regional work so popular with backpackers so that they can spend more time exploring Australia, people try to take advantage of their desperation to find a job which counts towards their 88 days. Always keep your eyes open to scams such as unpaid trials, sites which ask for you to pay a fee before you can apply for a job (such as ibackpackers.com) and don’t pay any work fees or accommodation fees in advance. 

When To Go

Summers in Australia get very hot while winters can get a bit chilly. If you are from Ireland and the UK, it is probably best to avoid doing your regional work between the start of December and the end of February if possible – that way you won’t be stuck out in temperatures of over 35°, working hard. If you do have to do your regional work during the hottest summer months, if you can try to get something with a coastal breeze and avoid the Northern Territories and North Queensland – the heat can be unbearable and relentless in the summer months. The heat in these regions can unfortunately lead to deaths from heatstroke. This unfortunately happened at a farm near Ayr in November 2017, when a young Belgian man collapsed and later died while picking water melons.

When Your Doing Your Regional Work

Sun Protection Even in the winter time in Australia, you should where and top up your sunscreen all day. You will, more than likely, be spending all day in the sun working so the last thing you want to end up with is sun burn. I would also recommend wearing a hat and sunglasses if you can and try to keep your shoulders covered.

Stay Hydrated Australia is hot in general and regional work will get you working up a sweat so make sure you always have a bottle of water with you and drink lots of fluids, ideally at least 8 liters of water a day. We were lucky on our farm that all of the barns had water coolers and cups for us to help ourselves to and our workshop had a supplies of electrolyte ice pops.

Stock Up Some of the places backpackers go to undertake their regional work can be quite remote so it is important to stock up on your necessities (in my case, chocolate). We were a half hour drive from the nearest supermarket and had limited access to cars to be able to do our grocery shopping meaning you may only get to do a shop every 2-3 weeks, so planning your meals and shopping list becomes very important. The last thing you want to happen is to run out of things for breakfast or dinner.

A Good Data Plan If you are on a remote farm, you will have very little to do in your free time after work and the WiFi isn’t necessarily very good so I would recommend making sure you have a good data plan to watch things on YouTube and Netflix. I got a $60 plan with Vodafone which was ideal for me. This plan included unlimited national calls and texts, 50 international texts and 12GB of data per month.

Home Time

Form 1263 Your employer will need to fill out the ‘Form 1263’ which states you worked for them and the work you undertook. This will be required for your second year application.

Payment Summary Your employer will supply you with a payment summary when you finish work so you can claim your tax back if you are owed any.

Payslips Make sure you keep all of your payslips, as you will require these for your second year visa application.

Application for 2nd Year Visa The application for your second year visa can take up to between 3 and 4 weeks to be granted, so make sure you give yourself enough time for your application to be processed. It is also worth to note that if you apply for your second year visa while you are in Australia, you must be in Australia when it is granted while if you applied for it while you are outside of the country, you must still be outside Australia when it is granted. You can make your application and find out more information about how to apply online here.

Memories Regional work can be very hard at times,but you will make wonderful memories and great friends. When I was working on the stud farm where I did my regional work, I had early starts and late finishes, was knocked over and bitten by horses, got burnt from a hot gate, came home covered in muck and dust every day and sometimes black, blue and bleeding from general knocks but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I got to work with amazing horses and even more amazing people who I never would have had the pleasure to meet otherwise. The knowledge I gained and experiences I had will last me a life time.