In 2023, I lived remotely in Outback Australia, working in tourism and boy, was it an experience…
This post is purely based on my experiences and is filled with lots of things I wish I had known before working in Outback Australia. I had some amazing experiences, saved heaps of money and met some great people while working remotely. But in many ways, I had a really terrible experience. I absolutely don’t regret the decision to work remotely, but I do wish I had more of an insight beforehand into what life would look like living and working in the Outback. If you want more specific information on how to find seasonal remote work in Australia, check out my guide and tips here.
Type of work
Most people assume that if you are working in the Outback in Australia, you’re working in farming or agriculture. While there is certainly a lot of farm work, there are also many other professions needed in remote parts of Australia. Farm work is definitely the easiest kind of remote work to find, particularly if you’re a backpacker needing to get your 88 days of rural work for your visa. If you don’t fancy farm work or fruit picking, the other alternatives are working in tourism-related jobs or working in a mining town. These may include jobs such as receptionist, retail worker, chef, tour guide, housekeeper, bartender, waiter, porter, maintenance staff and driver. If you work in a mining town, there are also lots of jobs in the actual mines, which can be incredibly lucrative.
Money
One of the main drawcards of working remotely in Australia is the capacity to save money! However, not all remote work is equal in terms of the pay rate. Working in a mining town (whether or not you actually work in the mines) is definitely the most lucrative. If you work in the actual mines, your ability to make and save money will be even higher. Tourism-related jobs in remote areas (such as Central Australia or the Kimberlies) will also give you a good ability to save money. Remote farming or agricultural work tends not to be as lucrative, but you can still save a fair bit of money. For reference, I worked an entry-level reception job in the Outback and saved $1000 AUD a week, just from working a standard 38-hour week.
The reason you earn so much money is usually a combination of higher pay rates (to attract workers to remote areas) and the lack of things to spend money on. Depending on where you work, accommodation and meals may be included in your job offer. This means that you only really spend money on non-essential “fun” purchases like activities, drinks or clothing. Even if food and accommodation aren’t included, this isn’t going to be a major expense, as rent and food are not as expensive as in cities.
Accommodation
Accommodation can differ greatly, depending on the size of your employer, your job and where in Australia you work. Bigger companies will have a large staff accommodation area called a staff village. For most roles, your accommodation could be a small private room or even a shared room (usually with only 1 other person). Bathrooms can either be an ensuite off the room or a shared bathroom block nearby. Generally, you’ll also have a closet or other clothing storage area in the room, cooling/ heating and sometimes a desk or TV. Staff villages will usually have other amenities like laundries and common areas. Bigger staff villages will generally have better amenities, with some having swimming pools, bars, kitchens, gyms and gardens. If you work a better-paying role, you may have a small house or bungalow to yourself, which may include things like a kitchen, living area and private garden.
Food
One of the main pitfalls of working remotely in Australia is the access to fresh food and the diversity of the types of food available. If you’re working in a farming or agricultural area, the access to food is likely to be a bit better. If you’re working somewhere remote in the middle of arid land like Central Australia, the Kimberley region or other mining towns, there will likely be no farms nearby. That means that all food needs to be shipped in on trains, buses or planes. Shipping food to remote places is expensive and can be slow, and food deliveries may only come once a week. This creates a lot of issues with accessing fresh food, as certain fruits and vegetables may go bad in transit. Food also has to be stored, and certain things need to be rationed throughout the week so they don’t run out.
If you work in a resort or hotel, the best food is served to the paying guests. Staff meals are generally very basic and can be repetitive. Often staff meals are made using the cheapest food products and consist of meals that take the shortest time to prepare. Sometimes, things aren’t ordered or rationed properly, and you run out of a certain product (like milk alternatives) until the next delivery. Other times, things like potatoes may be overordered, and you end up eating potatoes every meal for a week. There is a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables due to issues with transporting and storing them, so meals consist of products that are long-lasting and harder to go bad. Things like rice, potatoes, frozen vegetables, canned fruit and frozen bread were served often.
Unfortunately, if you are working remotely, you usually don’t have a choice but to eat the food. Remote towns usually don’t have supermarkets, or anywhere you can buy food. If there is a restaurant on-site, you could opt to pay extra for meals here, but this will end up being costly, as compared to staff meals which are free. Personally, I would try and endure the free staff meals for most of the week and then treat myself to a pub meal once a week so I wasn’t overspending too much on food.
The Wildlife
The first thing anyone asks when you tell them you worked remotely in the Outback is, “How did you survive with all the creatures?”. The creatures are nowhere near the worst part of working remotely. Sure, we did see snakes and spiders occasionally, but for the most part, they avoided humans. The snakes and spiders we did see weren’t even dangerous/deadly. There were some dingoes around, but again, they didn’t really approach humans aggressively. In four months, I only heard of one dingo encounter where they approached a human, but they didn’t attack, and they were most likely just curious.
The main creature that was an annoyance was the flies! I have never experienced flies like this in my life and hope never to experience it again. Fly nets are a must if you’re working in the Outback! The flies will try and fly in your nose and mouth or just buzz around your eyes and ears.
Social Life
Your social life will generally be with the other people you work with when you are working remotely. If you are planning on working remotely and are a social person, try to work for a larger employer. The more people you work with, the more people you have the chance to interact with and generally, the more exciting your social life will be. I worked in a resort that employed around 70 people, which seemed like a lot when I first started working. It’s actually really not that many people when you consider other factors. For example, there will be people who keep to themselves and don’t socialise outside of work. There will also be people who you just don’t really get along with or have absolutely nothing in common with.
You end up just hanging out with the same people day in and day out. While that can be fun, and you can end up forming super close friendships, it can be repetitive. After a while, living in the middle of nowhere with nothing new happening and nobody new to meet, you do run out of things to talk about. What ended up happening when I lived remotely was people started hooking up, and there was a lot of gossip and rumours. People were bored, and most people who work remotely are young and single, without any commitments. Even if people weren’t doing anything gossip-worthy, other bored people would literally just make random stuff up.
Boredom
There are 168 hours in a week. 38 of those hours you’ll spend at work and another 56 hours you’ll spend sleeping. That leaves 74 hours a week you need to occupy yourself. What do you do in the middle of nowhere? You will probably spend some of the time exploring the nearby attractions, like going on hikes, road trips, camping or visiting a waterhole. Some of the other time, you might spend socialising with coworkers. But chances are that won’t be all your spare time. Unfortunately, you may not be able to kill time on your phone or by watching TV. The more remote you work, the less access to the internet you will have. Unless your employer pays extra for a Starlink, which is an internet that connects to a satellite, expect the Wi-Fi or phone coverage to be spotty at best.
My best piece of advice would be to prepare for boredom. Bring activities or things that you can fill your time with that don’t require the internet. That could be things like books, craft supplies, games or other hobby equipment.
Mental Health
Probably the thing that surprised me the most about working remotely was the toll it takes on your mental health. Not only do you have to deal with your standard homesickness from being away from familiar settings and family and friends, but the remoteness is a whole other beast. You can start to feel literally trapped. You also have the repetition of living remotely, being with the same people every day and eating the same (usually bad) food. Without reliable access to the internet, you can lose contact with your support network from back home and feel very alone. Lots of people end up drinking every day just for something to do, which can exacerbate all the other negative feelings.
The lawlessness
Another thing that totally surprised me about working remotely is how lawless it was. Having always worked in urban parts of Australia, I took for granted that there are parts of Australia where laws and regulations just don’t get followed. This is partly due to cultural differences but also how hard it would be to get caught, given there is no law enforcement nearby. Some of the crazy things I saw that were “normal” working in the Outback included Chefs not caring about food handling laws and serving guests mouldy food, and people babysitting children who have no Working With Children’s Check (meaning they could be a known convicted predator being around children unsupervised). The culture around driving was wild too. Staff who had never had a driver’s license and did not understand road safety rules were allowed to drive around guests. Other people drove so drunk that it’s a miracle they even got home in one piece. While this stuff definitely happens in cities and other parts of Australia, the wildest part about working remotely is that nobody bats an eyelid.
Poor working conditions and even poorer managers
The worst part of working in the Outback, in my opinion, is the working conditions and awful management. Not having adequate breaks, not being allowed sick days, having to do unpaid training, workplace bullying and sexual harassment were considered the norm. This may be really specific to the place I worked, but I would hazard a guess that at least some of these things are occurring in other remote workplaces. That’s because they can get away with it so easily. There is no sort of formal law enforcement around, and management are answerable to a head office who has no idea what really goes on in these places. High staff turnover of seasonal workers means nobody sticks around long enough to demand the bare minimum of working conditions.
Unfortunately, the managers who let these things happen are inadequately experienced themselves and either don’t know how to change the culture or simply don’t care. While working in the Outback for a season can be really fun and financially lucrative, managers are generally working for a longer period of time and have to deal with a lot more responsibility. Therefore, it is harder to recruit management staff for remote tourism jobs so anyone who accepts the job is either a really special person who loves Outback life or (more likely) could not get work elsewhere and had to take the position. That means that management staff are usually wildly unqualified for their position or have other major red flags in their management abilities.
Would I recommend remote work in Australia?
Yes and no. It really depends on what you are hoping to get out of it and where you end up working. Not every remote job is rated equally, and some people were lucky and had much better experiences than I did. There is no denying it is a great way to see a part of Australia that you would otherwise probably not visit, and the money you save working remotely can be life-changing. But you do have to be quite mentally tough and be able to keep yourself grounded while working remotely. I think having an idea of what to expect (and expecting the worst) from the get-go can make the experience slightly easier.
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