Hostel Owners are Exploiting Backpackers in Mildura

Photo by Flickr user Platform Orange

If you’re a backpacker in Australia on a 12 month working holiday visa, you can extend your visa by one year in exchange for three months of farm work. To do this, you simply select an agricultural town and the job that you’re most prepared, put up with it for a short term, and then go back to being a happy, free-spirited backpacker. Or that’s the plan anyway. In other cases you get completely ripped off in a small town where you don’t know anyone. And for a lot of backpackers, that place is Mildura.

One of the largest farming hubs in Victoria, Mildura accounts for over 80 percent of the state’s grapes, as well as a large portion of citrus fruits, and due to the high potential of orange packing work (which is the holy grail of farm work because you can actually make cash), the town attracts more backpackers than most other regions around Sydney and Melbourne. But there’s also a steady stream of horror stories coming from inside the backpacker community. It turns out that there’s not as much work in the region as advertised, and desperate hostel owners have taken to leading travellers in search of a visa to their establishments under the guise of work that in reality aren't there.

Fair Work Australia has said that litigation involving overseas workers makes up 20 percent of their legal activity, and that they’re conducting active investigations relating to seasonal harvest workers in Mildura. Even the local harvest labour office has admitted to scams going on in the area. “There are a lot of jobs online that don’t exist, and people advertise jobs in advance if they own hostels to get people there, even though the work isn’t around,” they said. “They’ve found a loophole in the way things work. You can be a registered backpackers hostel that charges rent, and that’s required by law, and the government conducts health and safety inspections. And the same goes for rooming houses – but there are a lot of hostels around that fall between the rooming house and hostel guidelines – and that means that there’s a problem. They don’t charge rent, directly, but rather get their board money through job search fees, so they’re not on the hostel books.”

To get an idea of how it works, I spoke to a Canadian named Kristy McNally, who was in search of a second year visa. She wound up at a place called Mildura Oasis Backpackers, which promised orange packing work through the May/September season by referring her through an agency. For its part, the agency charged Kristy $200. On top of that she had to pay two weeks rent upfront ($300) in order to be put on a waiting list of around 50 people. She was also told that if she left the hostel, her name would be taken off the list.

Kristy, when she eventually packed oranges.

“In order to stay on the list,” Kristy explains, “I did vineyard work and lived at the hostel. It was $5 per box of grapes, and I did about six a day, 6am to 6pm with no breaks". But working to bide time before your preferred job becomes available presents more problems than hard work and low pay. "If you weren’t at the hostel when your name was called you were taken off the list. There were two girls in my room, Germans, who waited for five weeks at the top of the list. They never once left their hostel room. I brought them food and water and stuff, that’s how desperate they were to get a job. They didn’t have enough money to leave – they didn’t have enough money to stay. Eventually I got lucky because I got a job at a nightclub. Ironically, it was a nightclub owned by the hostel. In order to make enough money, girls would work 6am to 6pm grape picking, then 8pm to 4am at the nightclub.”

Another girl I spoke to named Fredrikaa, from Sweden, was also caught up in the Mildura mess. “I went on Gumtree and applied for a few jobs,” she explained. “And this one was the only one that got back to me. I paid $400 and fifty dollars and a bonding contract for two weeks, and $150 to start. I left after one week – we were staying in these old caravans, and it was so cold… there were three or four people in a one-room caravan. The doors wouldn’t shut properly, there were mice in the kitchen, and we made almost nothing per day. When I left it felt like I left jail. This can’t be going on anymore, it’s got to stop.”

So next time you see a near-paralytic backpacker dancing on a table to Skrillex, be kind. They may have just got back from packing oranges.