Work and play in Queensland, Australia: Visas

by Mike Barish on

Australia is a tremendously easy country through which to backpack. It has superb infrastructure, seamless transportation systems that allow you to traverse its massive landscape and a surplus of affordable accommodations. It’s no wonder that so many European and American teens are delaying their entrance into college or the “real world” for a year and are working their way through extended Australian holidays. But before you defer your admission to Southwest State A&M Tech and head down under with visions of boomerangs and dingos dancing through your head, there are a few things that any young person needs to know about how to work and backpack through Australia legally. The last thing you want is to be deported. That’s just embarrassing.

American? I Have Good News & Bad News

So, you’re a US citizen (or from Chile, Thailand, Malaysia or Turkey) and you want to work and backpack through Australia. Are you between the ages of 18 and 30? Are you healthy and free of any criminal history? Can you speak English at a “functional level?” Then the Australian Work and Holiday visa (Subclass 462) is just the paperwork for you!

The good news is, you can visit Australia for twelve months, leave and enter the country any number of times during that period, pick up some temporary employment along the way and study for up to four months. According to the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship, this visa “is for you to holiday and travel in Australia. Any work should be temporary to supplement your funds. Periods of work should be broken up by periods of holiday and travel.” In other words, this visa is less about the work and more about making sure you don’t end up broke in Australia while traveling.

Holders of this visa may not work for the same employer for more than six months. Violating that rule may result in cancellation of your visa. There’s that embarrassment again. You can pick up any job that you’d like, however, so Australia is your oyster. But all you get is 12 months in the country, so make the most of it. No extensions or second visas are offered on the Subclass 462 Work and Holiday visa. And that, my friends, is the bad news.

The Luckier Countries

Australia offers another type of visa that is much more liberal and allows for significantly more time in the country. The Working Holiday visa (Subclass 417) is for people from Belgium, Canada, Republic of Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan and United Kingdom. Once again, you must be age 18 to 30, healthy and not be a criminal. If you fit the bill, you can work and play in Australia for up to twelve months. But from there, this visa begins to provide a few more options for residents of these lucky countries.

You see, if you perform three months of specified work while on your Working Holiday visa, you become eligible for a second Working Holiday visa. In other words, you can double your time down under and explore Australia for up to 24 months. No too shabby. But what qualifies as specified work? I’m glad you asked.

Specified Work

Specified Work is very…um, specific. Before I get my high school English teacher too upset, let me explain to you the most important thing you need to know about Specified Work: It’s not easy. If you were dreaming about bartending for three months and improving your bottle twirling skills in exchange for a second visa, well, you’ve watched Cocktail too many times. Essentially, Specified Work benefits the state and gives back to the country that’s letting you roam around freely for 12 to 24 months. So, you’re going to get your hands dirty in exchange for that second visa. But it will be rewarding, help you meet both other backpackers and local Australians and allow you to see parts of the country that are even more beautiful than those more often visited by tourists.

Specified Work includes:

  • plant and animal cultivation
  • fishing and pearling
  • tree farming and felling
  • mining
  • construction

The most popular form of Specified Work is plant and animal cultivation. While the phrase may make the work seem overly daunting, in essence this category encompasses fruit picking and general farm work. For example, in Queensland, banana farming is a $200 million AUD industry. Those bananas aren’t picking themselves, so farmers employ backpackers from all over the world to pick, sort and box the fruit year-round.

After three months doing Specified Work, travelers on a Subclass 417 visa are eligible for a second visa and 12 more months in Australia. Australia gets a steady stream of young, healthy and eager workers to work in jobs that provide for the state and travelers get money to subsidize their lengthy trip through Australia. In other words, it’s a win-win.

Once again, travelers can leave and enter the country any number of times and cannot work for any one employer for longer than six months. And studying is limited to four months. In other words, work to put some money in your pocket and then get back to exploring Australia’s vast array of activities and wonder. Many hostels will typically partner with local farmers and other employers whose endeavors qualify as Specified Work to help backpackers find positions. These hostels cater to extended stay backpackers, so the accommodations are comfortable, clean and conducive to making people feel at home.

Know Before You Go

The good folks at Backpacking Queensland arranged for me to tour both a banana farm and a farm that specializes in training young people and assisting them with finding cattle farm work. Later in this series, I’ll profile both of those farms and go into more detail on what it’s like to be employed doing Specified Work.

Picking up and moving to another country for an extended period of time requires a fair amount of preparation. Do your research, speak with people who have been there before and understand what you want to get out of the situation. Australia is a very welcoming place and has created visa options that benefit the country and its visitors. Being informed before you get there will help you avoid any potential pitfalls that could result in visa problems or, even worse, deportation. Man, that would be really embarrassing.

For more information, check out the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship website.

Mike Barish spent a week in Queensland, Australia on a trip sponsored by Backpacking Queensland to see how backpackers find employment and entertain themselves down under. He’ll be sharing what he learned about the logistics of working in Australia’s Sunshine State and the myriad activities that young travelers have at their disposal. Read other entries in his series HERE.

International CouchSurfing Day: Do you have a couch lined up?

by Jamie Rhein on

Ten years ago on June 12, CouchSurfing was born–or rather CouchSurfing.com was registered as a domain name and sleeping on the couch of people you just met became an organized system. More than just a way to hook people up with a free place to call it a night, CouchSurfing was created as a way to help make the world a better place.

See, if you stay on the couch of people who have agreed that they like people to stay on their couch as a way to get to know traveling types and expand their connections, the world becomes more friendly. When you make this a global scene, the power just grows.

As a person who CouchSurfed before it was conceived as an organized entity, I can attest to the value of staying with strangers. When I traveled across the United States with a friend of mine after we got out of the Peace Corps, we used our connections of friends to stay with their friends and family members. In most cases it determined where we headed and the experience created a sense that the U.S. was warm, welcoming and friendly.

Our couchsurfing found us staying in: Des Moines, Iowa courtesy of a home for wayward women; at a dairy farm in Vinita, Oklahoma, an itty bitty town; a bachelor pad in downtown San Francisco; and in a house near the beach in Carlsbad, California. At each place we hadn’t met the people before we showed up at their door (or they picked us up at the bus station). The rest of the time we stayed with friends of ours or my family members in various towns and cities in Kentucky, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and California. Her parents sprung for the hotel room in Seattle and Vancouver and we tented it Utah and at the Rocky Mountain National Park.

That do-it-yourself couchsurfing experience has prompted me to welcome other people who have needed a place to stay into my home which has added to the feeling of expansiveness. It has also created a rich bank of memories of the people who have stayed with us who live in other parts of the world. One of them, Rita Goldman Gelman, author of Tales of a Female Nomad has made couchsurfing an integral part of her life. She stayed with her when we lived in New Delhi and we visited her two summers ago in Seattle.

Without our connections, there’s no way we would have been able to afford this trip and would have missed out on what helped me transition back into a life in the United States (until I moved overseas again).

Thanks to CouchSurfing.com people don’t need to rely on their own connections which might be a paltry number. The whole world is ones oyster thanks to an organized, Internet based system. To date there are 232 countries, 59,929 cities and 1,168,136 people who are registered with couches.

To celebrate International CouchSurfing Day you can also begin looking for a couch in a place you’ve always wanted to go–or offer someone yours. Here are two events happening to celebrate the occassion.

For more Gadling couchsurfing perspectives check out Brook Silva-Braga’s experiences in northern Europe and Tynan’s in Haiti. Neil also vouches for couches and has fond memories of an experience in Kazakhstan.

Gadlinks for Friday 6.12.09

by Brenda Yun on


It’s Aloha Friday as they say here on the islands — and a very special Friday at that! Today marks the beginning of the 62nd annual King Kamehameha Day festivities in Hawaii, so you can count on me enjoying the parade, draping ceremony, fun, and sun that lasts through the weekend.

Here are some other cool “happenings” going on in the travel blogosphere to jump start your weekend:

Have a great weekend, Gadlinkers. ‘Til Monday, aloha…

For past Gadlinks, click HERE.

“Virginia is for Lovers” celebrates 40 years with statewide discounts

by Alison Brick on

If when you say “Virginia is for Lovers” you mean “Virginia is for Discount-lovers” you’d be right.

It’s the tagline’s 40th anniversary and the state is going all out with travel discounts. The “Virginia’s 40 Off Travel Deals” program offers 40% off, $40 off, and “Buy 3, Get 1 free” savings at 200 participating hotels, museums, and other outfitters.

For example, get 40% off every night you stay at the Sheraton Reston Hotel; or stay three nights and get the fourth night free at Fife & Drum Inn in Williamsburg.

At George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, buy three tickets and get one free. Same for Luray Caverns during the month of August.

Most of the deals are valid through the end of the year or into 2010, but be sure to check the terms and deadlines closely since they vary.

The “40 Years of Travel Passions Sweepstakes” is also underway. Register at Virginia.com to win one of 40 Virginia vacations–focused on wine, outdoor adventure, nature, or local cuisine. One trip is given away per week through November 23rd.

The “Virginia is for Lovers” tagline debuted in a Bride’s Magazine ad in 1969.

New York City’s summer street fairs: A guide and suggestions

by Jamie Rhein on

This past Saturday, I walked out of my brother’s apartment building near Stuyvesant Park in Manhattan to discover the 2nd Avenue Street Festival underway. Block after block, 2nd Avenue was closed to traffic and perfect for discovering those items I didn’t know I had to have while brushing up on my Wolof.

New York City’s street fair scene is one of the terrific pleasures of summer in Manhattan–if you’re a pedestrian. The taxi driver who took me to Port Authority where I caught my Greyhound bus trip home made a quick turn off 6th Avenue on Sunday in order to avoid a street fair up ahead. He recounted a time of going blocks out of his way in order to get where he needed to go because he was thwarted by a street fair.

Although some street fairs seem to spring up spontaneously, there is a schedule of where to find them. I just happened upon two of them because they were where I happened to be. Each of them had their own feel. Some fairs have music, some give a nod to a particular ethnic group, and some are a mish mash of a variety of influences. Here’s a guide to what to look for if you go and a brief Wolof lesson to add to the shopping pleasure.

The two festivals I happened upon were in very different neighborhoods which added to their distinctive flavor. The Stuyvesant area is a mix of gentrification, historic houses, ethnic diversity and people who have lived in the neighborhood for years. Because 2nd Avenue is a wide street, the fair had an open feel that looked like part flea market and part carnival with a festive aura of non-fussiness. People of all ages, several with kids and people with dogs milled about, enjoying the sunshine, the goods and each other’s company.

The first item to catch my attention was the large grill filled with mozzarepas, my new favorite street food. Mozzarepas are cornbread pancakes with mozzarella cheese sandwiched between. They are grilled until the cheese melts and the pancake is crispy. Mine wasn’t cheap, $5, but I shared with a friend and the $1 lemonade a block later averaged out the price.

On the lookout for earrings, I spied a booth that mostly caught my attention because of the baskets arranged in front–and the vendors selling the wares. Turns out, the couple is from Senegal and are Wolof speakers, the language I learned in the Peace Corps. Thus came a conversation that included me asking them to reduce the price of two pairs of earrings that, frankly, were already cheap-$5 a pair. Always excited to brush up on Wolof, this interlude was one of my most favorite parts of my street fair excursion.

I also bought a T-shirt, a multi-colored artsy item that looks like it would be in an upscale boutique in a small college town. I noticed a $115. 00 original price on something else. I paid $15. The brand is Windspirit, Wind Song. . . It’s Wind something, but I can’t remember exactly.

At the fair near Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, as a reflection of the more upscale neighborhood, there was more of an art festival feel, although some of the items were similar to the one on 2nd Avenue. The African jewelry showed up several times at both locations. At this fair there were more booths that fit a fine arts to high end crafts category.

There was one booth at the Second Avenue fair that was one-of-a-kind. I only saw one booth total selling very cool wine bottle gift bags. They were lovely and had an Asian look about them, however they weren’t kitschy, but something you could give someone with good taste. A great way to dress up wine if you don’t want to spend a fortune, but want to look like you’ve put effort into a hostess gift. They were $10 for three. What a deal and I passed it by. Rats. I also passed up a chair massage. Too bad.

If you do come across any Wolof speakers, and I bet you will. Here’s a way to make a great impression.

Say “Nnga def?” Which means “How are you?”

The response to this is “Jama rek” which means “Peace only.”

If you think something is expensive say, “Defa ser.” (That’s expensive) “Wanil co tuti” (Reduce it a little.)

“Dee deet” means “No.” “Wow” means “yes”

“Mangee dem” means “I’m going.”

“Jeri jef” is “Thank you.”

Such words can get you far. Maybe not a reduction in price, but a good time. By the way, I spelled the words the way they sound to me. That’s partly how I learned Wolof.

Here are three sites I found that list festivals. My suggestion for deciding which one to hit is to see where you might be in New York City and use the street fair as a draw to a particular neighborhood. The great thing is that they go on all day, you don’t need to pay admission and there are not lines to tie up your time. Plus, they’re free and wonderful for people watching. Dogs, children, the elderly, and people with weight problems are more than welcome to join in the festivities.

I’m very grateful to Ed Yourdon who snapped these wonderful pictures last October at the street fair on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. I didn’t have my camera. Click through Yeardon’s street fair gallery and you’ll feel as if you’re at the fair.