 |
| Backpackers |
BYRON BAY, AUSTRALIA: “I’m going up to a farm to pick tomatoes for three months,” a backpacking
young French woman I met on the bus to the Brisbane airport told me. She went
on to explain, “I found out about the job
from a girl from Chicago at the backpackers hostel I stayed.” “Is this common?” “Yes, it is, if you want a twelve-month extension on your visa, you have
to work eighty-eight days on a farm. I could have become a WWOOFer, [she
spells it for me] but you don’t get paid
for that. At least picking tomatoes I’ll get paid something.” A little
later, a couple of gentlemen explained that this is how much of the farm labor
gets done in Australia. They use the backpackers hostels as a means of
recruiting these farm laborers. The jobs are tough and the pay is low.
Australians won’t do these jobs. WWHOOFing they told me is another way of
getting cheap labor. Hosts don’t pay the WWHOOFer anything. They just need to
furnish them with decent meals and a place to stay. Since I had arrived in
Australia I had seen a lot of these backpacker hostels, so I was curious just
how they were set up. “Well, you can find
all types,” the French woman told me. “The
one I stayed in had two sections. The one section was like a dormitory with
four or more bunk beds in a room. The other section was made of tents. That’s
where I actually slept. I had just a thin mat to sleep on. I borrowed a blanket
from someone else and used my knapsack for a pillow.”
