Talk:Australia

I want to add somewhere basically the following:

I traveled to Australia on the working holiday visa in the early 2010s. As of 2025, this visa costs AUD 650. At that time, US citizens could only get the visa for a single year. Most other travelers could get a second year, but not people from the US. They were always surprised and insisted everyone could, if only you did some ag work. Not true.

What is true, however, is that if you use that time to find a job absolutely nobody wants, for example, on a banana farm, they will sponsor a visa for you to stay and keep working for them. (Bunches of bananas are large and extremely heavy. They are "humped" (carried). One person holds the bunch on their shoulder over their head while the other person chops it off the 'tree' with a machete. That's right. Swings a machete over the top of your head while you are heavily weighed down by bananas. There are snakes in with the banana litter, just FYI.)

Agricultural jobs in Queensland* at the time often had a relatively strong binary gender divide. As far as me and my partner knew at the time, we were a cis het couple, so I don't know how they do with that. Girls pack, boys pick. At my farm, girls picked on Fridays along with the guys. At another farm, all genders picked peppers. Someone stopped by the caravan park (RV park) and asked for male workers to pick "pumpkins" (butternut squashes). Boys hump bananas.

• From memory, Queensland was the place to work because they were more likely to pay by the hour, whereas other parts of the country paid by piece.