Australia-New Zealand Travel: Reality and dream

Young people are jostling for position: Australia or New Zealand is the obligatory pilgrimage if one wants to prove oneself in life.
Buy your backpack and your ticket to Sydney or Auckland. You will come back with a glowing aura, illuminated by the great adventure of your life. With a bit of luck, you will even be knighted and earn your place in the great Backpackers brotherhood.

But why this infatuation for these two countries?

New Zealand is a dream come true for young travellers. The desire for wide open spaces, so photogenic, few inhabitants, landscapes filmed in cinemascope and the reputation of being a land of plenty. Let’s add a pinch of kiwis, the inhabitants, not the birds, to the legendary reputation: very hospitable and so cool… 
Young people want to make their pilgrimage here, New Zealand THE destination for the backpack traveller. No wonder: the country is stable, easy to explore, the crime rate is exceptionally low, and work is easy to find. This is a very appealing sketch for young adventurous people with the added bonus of free English lessons.
You can’t help but understand them. It is not in Europe that they can show up in a peasant farm, be received there with a welcome smile and make a season in a funy and warm atmosphere, dorms and friends included. Europe is complicated and rigid, New Zealand is cool and simple. At least, that’s what we think.

For young travellers, the country is above all far, very, very far from the family bosom: it’s adventure, THE real adventure

A golden opportunity for these young graduates (or not) to experience the experience of their lives, an initiatory journey that will take them from the status of a rough-hewn teenager to an accomplished adult.
The quantity of backpackers per square metre guarantees worried parents that their little one won’t be alone, that they’ll make friends. It’s not such a wild ride in the end and it’s looking more and more like a summer camp for teenagers.

The other side of the coin is quite different, but it’s the omerta: everyone will tell you it was ammmmaaaaazing!

I only know a few sincere travellers, free enough from what people will say about it to talk about it freely. 
No one talks about this providential, often over-qualified labour force that squeezes in front of farms and farmsteads to beg for underpaid jobs. In the end, they earn less than the minimum wage in their home country, pay 4 times more for a packet of pasta and sleep in rotten dormitories. If it weren’t for the NZ or Australia, this workforce would be on the news with a racoleur title: the new slaves in Kiwi country.

The Work and Holiday Visa is a economic and social genius idea

Australia and New Zealand have found the miracle solution to meet the demand for seasonal workers. It could almost be a joke, but it’s very serious: these workers are only asking to be exploited so that they can stay 6 months or a year working 12 hours a day and gloat over the fact that they sleep in a garbage house. Why do they accept that? The young travellers want to come back with an enriching experience.
And how can we blame them? They come from so far away and why deny it, this experience has undoubtedly enriched, changed and galvanised them. Their story will convert others who, in turn, will not have the courage or honesty to tell the story coldly. Everyone prefers to come back as winner… Meanwhile, the farmers are rubbing their hands and the country’s economy as well.

The law to the rescue of Europeans in New Zaeland in search of adventure

Still confidential but true: in Australia, a new law was introduced in 2018 to establish a minimum hourly rate: $18.93 per hour, or $719.20 per week. Until then, wages could be as high as $8 per hour, without accommodation, food or transport. When we know the cost of living on this side of the Pacific, we ask for a tissue to cry on. But the number of candidates ready to do anything for a job gives the advantage to employers who don’t always respect the rules.

To end on a positive and objective note

Wages in Australia are higher than in New Zealand. The average is around $25 an hour. Housing is often included. It is important that holders of working holiday permits negotiate firmly and do not accept just anything. Hourly work remains the best option. Going off the beaten track, such as Sydney or Melbourne, will provide the adventurer with an authentic and enriching experience.