The Best Paying Jobs Are in the Gas Fields

HERVEY BAY, AUSTRALIA: “I’m on my way to work,” Jack, the man sitting next to me on the way to Brisbane said. “I work in the gas fields in Roma, two and half hours from the nearest town. We have three weeks on and one week off. The company flies us home and back to work. As a result of fracking, the gas industry is booming. The best jobs are in gas, better than mining. It’s allowed me to buy a home for my family in Hervey Bay and a pied-à-terre in Sydney. Before taking this job, I had a construction business. This is much better though and really no headaches. At the camp, I get up at 4:30, go to the gym, work out, and then off to the drill site. I work until 4:30 seven days a week. Since there’s nothing to do at the camp, except play pool or table tennis, or watch TV, I’m usually in bed by 8:30. The meals are okay with a lot of variety. The box lunches, however, leave something to be desired. Altogether our camp has 200 workers, both men and women. We’re allowed to drink three light beers or two glasses of wine at night. In the mornings, they’ll randomly check us for drug and/or alcohol. In two years, there have been only two deaths: one from heat exhaustion and the other when a hoist came down on a trainee’s head. There are between 200 and 300 wells at our camp, each one producing up to a million dollars of gas per day. The gas is piped from our camp in Roma to the port in Gladstone. From there it is sent out to different countries for refining. Although the companies are by law forced to advertise job openings, it’s virtually impossible to get a job without knowing someone. Of course, there’s a lot of talk in the camp as to whether the fracking is safe. Contaminated water is brought up with the gas and siphoned off into ponds where it is treated and returned to the wells. All seems good and well, except no one really knows what’s happening down there and to what extent the gas is integral to the geological structure below.”

Tomato Picking Backpackers

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.”

Australian Hotels

Is It a Hotel or a Pub?

SIDNEY, AUSTRIA: I didn’t bother making hotel reservations before I left for Australia. Just showing up has worked better for me. It gives me the opportunity to check out the availability, and then decide. Sydney, I figured, should have plenty of hotels. The train to the city center is conveniently located next to the airport — $16 for a twenty-minute ride. I got off at Circular Quay from where I could see the Opera House and thought would be a propitious spot to find a hotel. I wasn’t disappointed, not far away I saw a small unimposing hotel that would probably not bust my budget, but to my surprise it was closed, locked up tight as a drum. A little farther down the street I saw another hotel but it too was locked up. “What gives with these hotels,” I thought. Granted I also saw a Marriott and a Radisson, which my wife, if she were here, would jump on, but were clearly beyond my budget. I stopped by two more small hotels, but they too were closed and then came to one where I could at least see someone inside. I waved to him through the locked door. He reluctantly opened the door. “Hello, are you open?” I said. “Nah, we’re not open for a few hours,” he replied. “But you’re a hotel, aren’t you?” He looked at my bags and shook his head, “We’re a pub, mate. Hotels are what we call them here.”

City Bus Tour

You can’t miss all the Chinese tourists in Sydney. I say Nǐ hǎo whenever I have the opportunity. They often act surprised, even delighted, that a Westerner would know this much. On the city bus tour, a Chinese family of four got on. The father sat down next to me and, of course, I said, “Nǐ hǎo.” He smiled, “You speak Chinese?” “Nah, just the one word.” His English was excellent. They were from Beijing. He worked for the Chinese Airline Industry Association. “So you fly a lot?” I said. “Yes, quite a bit. In fact, we spent six months in San Francisco — liked it a lot.” One of his daughters, maybe eight or so, reached over the seat in front of us to show her dad a picture on her iPhone of her and her younger sister in clown outfits. “Those your daughters?” I asked. “Yes,” he said proudly. “Two children, I thought that was impossible,” I said. “It’s possible, you just have to pay the penalty.” “And how does that work?” “It cost us about $30,000 for the young one. The penalty is six times the average annual income in Beijing.” “And what if you had a third child?” “Oh then the penalty would be much, much, higher.” I would have loved to learn more, but I had to get off at the next stop.

Through My Eyes

SYDNEY AUSTRALIA “My name is Alisha. I’m an educational consultant,” the young lady sitting next to me says cheerfully. It’s a 14½-hour flight from SFO to SYD. I lucked out getting an upgrade to business class. How, I’m not sure, since there were only four seats left and I was number five on the waitlist and now I’m sitting next to this perky young lady from Perth. Maybe this trip won’t be so boring after all. “Okay, so what does an educational consultant do?” I ask. She puzzles, apparently unsure just how to explain because, I presume, she thinks I may be too dumb to understand. After a few meandering aborted attempts, she cuts to the chase and sums up, “I create educational curriculum for kids from wealthy families.” “Oh, I see, a private tutor then?” She looks at me with a wry grimace, “Yes, I guess you could say that.” “And they fly you business class?” “Yes, of course.” “Sounds nice! But how do you go about finding these wealthy clients?” “By word of mouth.” “Really, it’s that easy?” She doesn’t respond and so I ask, “Do you mind if I ask who your clients are?” She frowns, “No, that’s confidential.” “Tell me though, do you have enough clients to keep you busy?” “Yes,” she says, as she pulls out and flips open United’s flight magazine and adds, “but I pretty much work at my leisure.” “You can’t beat that, I guess.” “It pays the bills and allows me to travel,” she says more pointedly indicating what I had suspected that this conversation about her job had come to an end. We did talk some more and she kindly gave me a variety of useful tips on Australia, but no more about her job, as if to say, “Through my eyes you may peer but my reality will remain a mystery.”