First Job

 July 2011


The days passed, the little money I had was spent and the need to work grew. I spent my whole day out trying to find leads at agencies, on-line, in the city, out bush. I tried everything to seemingly no avail.

Most of this was done on-line. I used the 30 minutes that location A gave for free, after which time I'd cross the road and do the rest of my work at location B. I happened to pick up one of their member cards somewhere in Asia and I was very grateful for it. I got an hour free and then it was only a dollar per hour afterwards. This was all way before I had a laptop. From all of this searching I was able to start making sense of the requirements that most employers were after. How the system works, what kind of work was popular in Australia, what qualifications most jobs required. When I look back at it, it was time very well spent because of all the information I gathered from those early days.

I went to Australia with my last $500 dollars, and that was already well past my overdraft. I just knew I'd succeed, I was not going to have it any other way. I never lost belief or was disheartened at any point during my quest. It was really tough coming from somewhere where I was able to live well on a small budget to having to get by on bread and canned tuna. If I didn't find work when I did, I would have only had enough to remain in the country for another 3 days and buy a one-way ticket out. Essentially, that was all the money I had left, so even if I had left the country I wouldn't have had enough to do anything abroad. It was either that or sleep on the streets. That's how tight things were. All of that was just a test of worthiness & character. I had arguably the best time during my first 2 penniless & jobless weeks that I've ever had in Australia. The first 5 weeks in Perth were sublime and everything went well until I got called up to go out bush.

Alas, I digress. As I was saying, I was getting really desperate for work and really needed to work. One day, while on the computer at location B. I received a call from out of the blue. It was one of the removal companies I had called on my first day asking whether I'd be available to start the next day. I went straight down to their yard, introduced myself and said I'd be ready to do as much work as they needed.

That night I did drink, I was so glad to have work and was in need desperate need of a cold beer. It was the best beer I ever drunk. Little did I know that this was to be the start of my real Australian adventure. Once I got that first job, more jobs kept coming in. In the space of a week I went from being potentially homeless to working 2 jobs and turning down several more work.