This article is for educational purposes only. I don’t shame regional work or believe this experience dampered my time in Australia. This is just to help others to understand factors in which travellers accept exploitive jobs and stay in them based on completing regional work for a second-year visa.
I wasn’t actually a slave, I wasn’t forced to work anyways. However, after my supervisor called us workers slaves several times, it felt too real. It’s hard to wrap up my entire experience, but these are the main points.
Before accepting this job my partner and I didn’t have any other job offers for three months. We drove down from Cairns, Queensland for this tree planting job in the Port Macquarie region. We were desperate and thought driving through a quarter of the country was the only way to complete our regional work. We spent A$800 in petrol (fuel) alone for the drive.
Before arriving to the job, the supervisor for this job explained we would be able to make a minimum of A$150 a day, and upwards to A$300 based on a piece-rate agreement. The piece-rate was A$0.15 per tree planted. We would live in the bush, meaning our living costs would be very low. From the beginning, the supervisor didn’t have the best communication.
The first morning of work was hard and confusing. Another backpacker, an experienced tree planter trained a few of us new workers. There were many delays as some of our equipment wasn’t ready and there was hardly enough spades for everyone. Because the pay was piece-rate, we weren’t paid for any of these delays or training.
More concerning was that the supervisor didn’t seem experienced in managing a team. Everyone was scrambling with the lack of communication and direction.
Eventually making it through the day I finished nine trays. This totalled to A$54, before tax, for the day, over a six hour shift. I had been expecting this as the experienced tree planters said we wouldn’t make much money on the first week. I did my best to pick up the pace and get in the routine of my positioning, spade throw, and overall tree planting skills.
A few days into tree planting and even the experienced tree planters weren’t making much money. Their average wage per day was A$100.
Still, I stayed in the same mentality to improve my work. Other workers were getting frustrated and angry.
My supervisor picked up on this and yelled to everyone, “I know this ground isn’t great, but I promise next week everyone will be making A$200 a day.” Then, not even a week in and two workers out of the ten had serious injuries preventing them from working.
After our first day off, just over a week working, three workers quit.
Two had been from injuries and the other was frustrated with the lies of making money.
I started to lose my focus of picking up the pace and began to worry I would also get injured. Now making about A$100 a day, after tax, I knew if I got injured I would have to return to Canada, with nothing.
Most days tree planting took place on steep hills with rocky terrain. We had to carry about three full trays of trees at a time. This weight made it easy to loose balance and fall.
Most of the injuries people had was from the repetitive force of slamming the spade into the ground. The hills were also home to venomous funnel-web spider.
The following weeks the ability to make AU$100 a day wasn’t much more attainable. The experienced workers were still making around the same, around A$150 each day. The soil was tough, full of rocks and the burn piles were everywhere. Burn piles are areas where trees and other rubbish were burnt after the plantation was cleared.
The best way to plant trees quickly is by getting into a tree-planting-mentality-zone. It’s like your body parts move without even thinking, or feeling the pain. Getting into this zone is tough when there’s so many rocks, and when rumours began of workers not getting paid.
In addition to unpaid training and other work, workers were also required to pick up trees everyday, unpaid. This took place each evening, even on days off. We had to squeeze into the boss’s vehicle driving one hour return, to where the trees were dropped off.
We would create a human train to pick up the tree trays and place them into the back of a trailer. On average the work was about 45 mins, but often we had to go to a service station or grocery store to pick up food. Meaning we had to give away nearly 2 hours of our evening, every day. If we didn’t do it, we couldn’t plant.
All of what I’ve mentioned so far are just a few of the big problems leading me to quit after one month. On top of the rough conditions, there were internal issues that began to spill out.
My supervisor hadn’t hired anyone new since the three people had quit. Another worker was on vacation leaving just four planters along with my supervisor and his girlfriend. My supervisor made it clear he and his girlfriend working as runners only make 15 percent of what the entire team makes each day. So when each worker made A$100 a day, they only made A$60 a day.
This meant that with a big team, there would be more money for runners, or in this case not a lot. My supervisor was very vocal about not making enough money.
Word got out that our pay cheques would be late, eventually we stopped getting paid altogether.
My supervisor’s girlfriend began planting trees and chaos followed. She was either crying from not wanting to work, or actually just walking off the job. Her boyfriend, our supervisor made started doing everything to help her make money.
This meant she was able to plant when and wherever she wanted. While the other tree planting slaves worked together in specific spots with tough terrain, the girlfriend worked in the cleanest areas. This meant she could make more money than us all, and she did. And she bragged about it.
On top of showing favourites, the supervisor was rude, and unable to speak to anyone without name calling or lying. Maybe his mood swings were from his diet of Red Bulls, cigarettes and McDonalds.
I quickly grew tired of being called a cunt, dog and slave by my supervisor while watching his girlfriend work the easy patches.
Living in the bush also started to have its downfalls. Sure, it’s great to live rent free, but our ‘home’ quickly began to look like a dump. This was mainly because other workers left their bags of garbage in or around the fire. I suppose to be burned? But no one ever did this.
Actually, one day after being tired of all the garbage I decided to light up and burn some of the bags.
Burning garbage doesn’t smell or look nice, neither are the fumes. After burning the second bag and huge bang went off. Yes, someone threw an aerosol can in and I watched it explode.
Aside from burning garbage, the site was littered with fertilizer, sad algae-ridden puddles, and garbage that had blown out of the fire. This quickly led a mice interrogation. After three weeks there, mice made their way into our van.
The first night it seemed they only stayed in the engine compartment. Then, the next two nights they hopped all around our van eating whatever they could get their disgusting little teeth into. On the last night before quitting I hardly slept. I hid all of our food in closed containers, but still the mice came in and bit through my wet wipes, which I used to bathe.
Messy campsite, aggressive and moody supervisor, mice, hard work for no pay, and favouritism for the girlfriend.
I kept reminding myself I accepted this job because it was the first serious job offer in three months. All I wanted was to complete my 88 days of regional work and I was almost a month in, so why should I quit now?
My last day it started as any other. After putting on my gear, the supervisor announced our entire team would have to take turns being the runner as he and his girlfriend weren’t making enough money.
I pointed out that we were hired as tree planters and not interested in running, as we would also then only make 15 percent off of everyone’s earnings. But it wasn’t up for discussion.
That day the girlfriend was to be a runner for the full day, but two hours in she decided to begin planting. Another co-worker pointed out it wasn’t fair, if we all had to run for the entire day, why not her? My supervisors said it was everyones responsibility that my supervisor and his girlfriend hadn’t been making money.
I felt like I was going to throw up. I was so anxious about quitting because I didn’t have a plan for my next step. But, I couldn’t stay any longer. I walked to my partner who had missed the conversation that had just happened. We sat down, I filled him in and we asked for a ride back to camp to leave.
After looking into our pay, we found out our boss never legally paid any taxes, or superannuation. I’m still owed around A$400. Other workers that stayed are owed thousands.
