It’s 8am on my first day living in Australia, and I’m dragging my luggage through an unfamiliar neighbourhood in search of accommodation. It’s a strange feeling having your life in a bag and not knowing where you’re headed, but in my case it didn’t last too long as around the first corner was a backpacker hostel which, after checking to see if the rooms were reasonably clean, I checked into.
I noticed earlier that morning, when storming out of the plague-ridden rat-hole where I spent my first night, that there seemed to be quite a few Irish people knocking around – and my new place was no different. In fact, not only were the Irish the single largest nationality represented, they actually outnumbered all other nationalities put together.
I wasn’t the first to notice this anomaly. On one of the bathroom stall doors someone scrawled ‘Nice place, but too many Irish?’ Predictably, an enterprising son of God’s green kingdom etched ‘Póg mo thóin’ (kiss my ass) underneath.
The general mood among Perth’s Irish exiles wasn’t bad – the sun was shining, there were tons of like-minded twenty-somethings to chat with, and beer was cheaper than home. However, the main subject of conversation was always work. Most people didn’t have any, and the search was on.
Crowds would gather at newsagents waiting for them to open on Thursday mornings so they could grab the first editions of the classifieds. Precious funds were exchanged for internet access and job websites were combed daily. Those who found work outside the city were bombarded with texts and phone calls from people they had met briefly in Perth and the question was always the same: ‘Are they looking for anyone else?'
Competition is fierce. A job at a Perth petrol station was advertised on popular classifieds website Gumtree.com and closed three days later after 400 applied. People were doing any work they could get their hands on. Qualified electricians and plumbers who two years ago were clearing a grand a week on Irish sites queued 20 deep when a builder wandered into the hostel with an offer of a day’s labouring.
Traditionally, hard-up backpackers struggling on the jobs market had a fall-back plan – agricultural work. The Australian government would encourage its foreigners to take up melon picking, chicken tending or vineyard pruning because there simply wasn’t enough Ozzies willing to work in the middle of nowhere for modest pay. But now, even lowly farm labouring jobs were like gold dust.
However, the traditional holy grail for backpackers is mining work. A driver, cleaner or kitchen hand in a mining camp could expect to earn $100,000 per year, and it was the one job everyone wanted.
I wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of heading out to Australia, working in the mines for a while and coming back loaded. But I did have a small advantage – I had been freelancing regularly for a Sydney-based mining magazine prior to my arrival, and had lined up a meeting with a second such publication in Perth for later that week.
I reckoned if I was writing for mining magazines I would regularly be in touch with people who might have jobs to offer. I wasn’t prepared for the volume of other interested parties, but felt there was a chance I could still get lucky. In the meantime, I would line up any sort of work to keep myself ticking over. I would be first in the queue for the classifieds and on web searches whenever I could.
Walking through central Perth on one of my first days in the city, I noticed a small group of Irish guys walking along ahead of me. Two middle-aged Aus-tralian men walked past them and obviously picked up on their accents. One said to the other, in earshot of me but obviously unaware of how on the money he actually was: “Would the last person to leave Ireland please turn out the lights?”
It wasn’t a particularly nasty comment, but it revealed a sad truth about Ireland today. Once again, a generation is being condemned to scratch around foreign countries looking for whatever poorly paid crappy job they can get their hands on. Once again, we’re raising our children like cattle for export.
To be continued...
