I have noticed a few posts in various threads lately regarding jobs, and thought I’d see if we could make a bit of a list of jobs, preferably that don’t require a lot of qualifications or experience, that a person could do for, say, a year in order to get a deposit together for their first property.
Particularly useful would be examples from personal experience.
There was a comment recently that unless you have 2 degrees, it’s hard to earn decent money.
To get things started, here’s a quote from Dazzling from another thread:
“roustabout or roughneck on one of the rigs at Moomba or Jackson. We used to get all sorts coming through, from illiterate 18 year olds through to 40 year old qualified teachers. Starting salary is about $ 45 K p.a., working 2 weeks on, 1 week off. If you apply yourself, keep your mouth shut and work your **** off, within 18 months you could easily make it to derrickman who are on about 70 K p.a. Gotta be better than doing the 9 to 5 thing in the city. All accom / transport / food / laundry taken care of.”
I would add kitchen hand from my own experience. 10 years ago, I was earning $600/wk with free meals and accomodation and no experience, at one of the refugee detention centres. I can only assume the pay would be higher these days.
The guards at this centre were on $50,000pa (remember this is 10 years ago) after doing a course of only 6months to a year, also with free accommodation and meals (and a tax rebate).
Perhaps other people might have some more up to date examples?
Can you just pick a profession with a high financial renumeration/expenses paid (or other) benefits and coax yourself into developing a genuine interest for it?
There are brickies that can lay 800 bricks a day at sometimes charge $2 a brick. Often they ask for cash. But would it be wise for me to drop everything and become a bricklayer? By the time I’m up to speed there may not be anything truly shattering going on in construction.
I remember seeing something on the front-page of the West Australian that the “lolli-pop” guys with the stop/slow signs can make up to 90k a year after various overtime pentaly type benefits.
Sometimes jobs that pay a ridiculous amount of money for what they are the ones that are heavily unionised. Unions can make it difficult for new people to enter a workplace and internal politics (not your employer) could decide how long you stay.
Other than that its danger money or doing something that you could only do for a few years while you are still young. Or being paid well to live out in the sticks, or work strange and long hours in a rotating work “week” that will make you slightly cuckoo.
I think you have to have a love for what you are doing not a love for “doing time while you save up a deposit cause you’d rather be in property”.
In life there’s an infinite number of paths you can take and sometimes you really gotta listen to yourself and your instincts and do what you want to do. There may be some mundane and less enjoyable tasks along the way but don’t make the entire path mundane and unenjoyable.
A friend of mine is working at some mine in Qld, and she says the men there are all on 130k per annum. They also get food, electricity etc included. Presumably women can do this too, and some wives live on the base. All housing is owned by the mine. Go figure- it’s a lot of money. As it’s fly in fly out, it can’t be too isolating.
Problem is- for some of the best paid jobs, they require doing something fairly unsavoury. That’s progress!
kay henry
I work as a Roustabout on an oil rig in NW WA. I work 3 weeks on and 3 weeks off. I earn about 84k for this with all meals, accomodation, flights, laundry etc but pay varies between companies. You must have completed a HUET course (helicopter underwater escape training) before you even get a look in. Now is a good time to apply as a lot of rigs are coming down to OZ because of the price of oil. The rig i’m on has work until end of 2006.
Regards
Regrow
You are a fool for 5 seconds if you ask a question, but a fool for life if you don’t.
Regrow:
Just wondering if you could describe the duties of your job. What does a Roustabout do during those 3 weeks on?
regards,
Chris
Hi Chris
My duties are to assist the Dogman with lifts using a crane and wire slings. Lifts vary from small items up to 20 Tonne lifts.I also help out on the Helicopter Landing Crew, and fire fighting support crew. In slow times you can be scrubbing the decks. Basically you get to do all the fun jobs no one else wants to do..lol But you do get 3 weeks off to do what ever you want to do. You work 12 hours a day 7 days a week for 3 weeks.There is also maintenance roustabouts that do all the painting etc. Casual rates are about $7200 clear per 3 weeks
Regards
Regrow
You are a fool for 5 seconds if you ask a question, but a fool for life if you don’t.
Regrow,
Good man…well done. Try and get up onto the floor as soon as you can. You probably already relieve the roughnecks on their smoko anyway. Working the decks leads to the crane driver, but that’s as far as you can go.
Get your IWCF as soon as you can and then get up on the floor. The last IWCF supervisors course I was on last year (only 5 days long) there was a young chap there who had never been in the industry and passed his supervisors ticket, with alot of help from the instructor…amazing. Didn’t have a clue what he was doing really, but managed to scrape togther enough marks to get over 70% in all three areas (theory / practical / equipment).
Ask your Driller heaps of questions without driving him nuts, and pull more hours than your normal tour. Do 2 or 3 hours of extra stuff in the opposite tour (get up the stick if you can when they are tripping). Your Pushers will quickly notice you.
Some of my colleagues here in the Middle East worked putting out the fires in Kuwait back in ’91. Labourers were on 3K per day, with the supervisors on 5K per day, working 6 month hitches. Not as good as top silks mind you, but up there. Pretty average conditions to contend with. Standing in the cellar up to your shoulders in crude, 45° heat and working with hand tools so as not to cause a spark.
I disagree with Caston strongly. My philosophy for the past 15 years has been a job is a job is a job. It involves having a boss and working hard. If you have to put up with the sh*te that comes with a job, you may as well pick one that pays well. Better still, get one that pays USD and one that doesn’t attract Ozzy tax…now ya talkin’.
If you want the nice city life with a fluffy cushy job that pays under 30K p.a., don’t start complaining about the low pay if you aren’t prepared to put in the hard yards..especially if you are young. Medical conditions notwithstanding.
Cheers,
Dazzling
“No point having a cake if you can’t eat it.”
Dazzling said:
“If you want the nice city life with a fluffy cushy job that pays under 30K p.a., don’t start complaining about the low pay if you aren’t prepared to put in the hard yards..”
Actually, Dazzling, I have ther idea that it’s often the hardest work that’s often the lowest paid- well, I think that used to be the rule (the generality). It’s why degree positions pay better- and workers don’t have to sweat their blood and tears. People have their own offices, lunch whenever they like, and complete autonomy- exactly the point of doing a degree in the first place.
Having said that, some of the above work is hugely financially rewarding. I think since the swing from blue collar aussie work, to white collar, and the resulting shortage of blue-collar workers… well, demand has meant that they blueys can demand big $$$
But to get a bird’s eye view of crap wages of some really hard workers, try and get a hold of a book called “Nickel and Dimed”- about Americans working for minimum wage- it’s a great book.
kay henry
Hi Dazzling
Can you please explain what IWCF stands for.
ThanksRegrow
You are a fool for 5 seconds if you ask a question, but a fool for life if you don’t.
Kay said ;
“degree positions pay better”
Wow Kay – not where I come from. My experience has been the exact opposite.
When I was a graduate Drilling Engineer, the best pay I was offered (out of 4 jobs) was 30K p.a. (Oz $ and fully taxable). The illiterate labourers I was working with on the rigs were on triple what I was on. They all assumed I was on more than their bosses ‘cos I was in charge of the show. It took me 6 years to overtake the lowest paid labourer.
“People have their own offices, lunch whenever they like, and complete autonomy- exactly the point of doing a degree in the first place.”
Once again, my experience has been the exact opposite. On my time off a couple of years ago I used to be on a lecture circuit with a Geo and a Reservoir Engineer. The three of us used to go around giving a 30 minute presentation to the year 10 students. The first couple of times I just bantered on about the job and career prospects etc. This bored the students and the teacher completely stupid. To wake them up, I decided on subsequent lectures to put the pay rates up on the board, of the different positions on the rig for everyone to see. Suffice to say that woke them all up and I had their full attention.
What was the two most common things I got asked about during question time ;
1. Are those pay rates for real ?
2. Why are we always encouraged to do a degree then ??Fluffy conditions were never high on their priorities. Incidentally, 3 separate teachers pulled me aside and queried me privately about the rates. They all subsequently quit their teaching jobs and went roughnecking.
Regrow – IWCF stands for International Well Control Forum. The ticket costs $ 1,650.00 and takes 5 days to obtain (Four categories…Driller and Supervisor level for both Subsea BOP systems or Surface BOP systems). Everyone in the industry worldwide on every rig has to have that ticket for any position of AD or up. Your company will put you through the course when you get to derricks, but all the sharp cookies get it on their own beforehand and get promoted quicker.
Cheers,
Dazzling
“No point having a cake if you can’t eat it.”
I’ve driven forklifts for $48 per hour on 12 shifts on the weekends (and this rate is certainly not the most!). Being a recipient of union induced employer generosity (ridiculously high pay rates) can certainly help the bank account. And friends have worked night shifts as storemen/forklift drivers for $35+ per hour, in the car industry.
Also up here in the smart state (Qld) there was a job going the other day for a tyre fitter for $37 an hour, boilermakers for $137 000pa and truck drivers for $24 per hour, 12 hour shifts, 5 days a week- imagine the overtime rates!
Obviously this is in the mining industry, but as Dazzling said, off to work for the graduate engineer on a $30k salary package, while the others wouldn’t bother turning up for anything less than double that…Go figure!
Caston,
Working full time for 6 months when I finished school allowed me to spend 7 months travelling through Africa and also paid my first years uni expenses. I didn’t like the job much or the people I had to work with but it was all “character building” and faded into insignificance when I acheived my goals. After uni, one year of full time work which was really dreadful after the first 3 months or so, allowed me to buy my first 2 properties and travel around Europe for 6 months, and support myself for the next 2 years. Seems like a good trade to me.Dazzling,
On oil rigs, what are the opportunities like for women (in practice, not theory)?Great posts everyone.
Oshen,
In theory, nothing stopping girls from working on the rigs. Most company procedures specifically allow for it so as to prove to their lawyers that they can’t be sued for discrimination, but that sits on the shelf in head office gathering dust. In reality, it’s a whole lot different.
In my 15 years on the rigs, probably working with cumulatively 10,000’s of people, I’ve only ever encountered 4 girls.
Two of the young girls were local Roma girls whose fathers were pushers working out at Eromanga. The novelty of having a young pretty thing wore off real quick when all the boys had to wait for her to have a shower by herself (one communal shower block). Also, up on the rig floor, to work efficiently requires a real tough co-ordinated team effort. It became apparent that with most tasks, the girls weren’t physically strong enough. It took about a week for them both to quit.
The third girl was a huge big Maori girl offshore on one of the floaters. She must of been a powerlifter in her former life ‘cos she could easily keep up with the lads tripping pipe. Last I saw she was doing derricks (on about 110K p.a.) and sitting her IWCF to step up to Driller. She was fantastic.
The fourth lady was a 50 yr old Chevron ‘company man’ (boss out on the rig) who really knew her stuff. No physical work in that position. The male pushers and Drillers really tested her, but after about a fortnight had them all eating out of her hand. I learnt alot from her.
If you want to start at the lowest level – 45K onshore and probably 80K offshore – and you are a woman, make sure you do some..no…make that an enormous amount of strength condition training, before going for a job. If you can’t lift very heavy weights (well above what the Nancy O.H.S. limits are for women), it’s not fair on your male colleagues who’ll have to take up your slack. That’ll be the first thing the superintendents who hire you will be looking for.
Everyone else – please stop flooding me with PM’s about jobs…I don’t work in Australia and cannot help with applications…I suggest you pick up the phone and start enquiring if you want a job badly enough.
Cheers,
Dazzling
“No point having a cake if you can’t eat it.”
Thanks Dazzling.
Dazzling,
I think we have different experiences in what our degrees have provided for us- vastly different experiences. Horses for courses.
oshen- the woman who is working on the minesthat I know of- she is cooking and she said some of the other women there (wives) are cleaning. She said that some of the woimen are only doing it because they’re bored- not much to do onsite in those places, I hear. And she said a lot of the men there have drinking problems.
kay henry
After lurking for a while, I thought I would chime in with this one.
i am a Chemist who has been working in the mainstream of Chemistry degree offered opportunities, namely analytical chemistry in Environmental labs. All good and well, and cruising toward a managerial type position. This is all fine and well, but in this country there is very little appreciation for chemist so pay rates are very low relative to education/training. The best I could hope for is around 60-65K as a lab manager.
Anyway, to cut a long and cynical story short, I am currently working offshore as a chemist/lab tech earning between 70 – 80K with potential for more 2 weeks on and 2 off. basically I have dumbed down my job, and now earn what I feel Chemist should IMO. Its a sad inditement of Australian society for this to occur.
But, I am having a ball and am very grateful for where I am after literally falling into the industry. This example is probably the midway point to the two sides being discussed here, so there must be other opportunities out there for educated people to earn the dollars
Those who think it can’t be done should not disturb those doing it
There are 4 women working on the rig I am on at present. One is a mud doctor (tests the mud used in drilling) and the other three run tests once the hole is drilled. Not sure of degrees they have to obtain the job.
Regards
Regrow
You are a fool for 5 seconds if you ask a question, but a fool for life if you don’t.
I have seen a number of women working on Rigs in a number of positions including medic, Cleaning/laundry, Engineer, Cook, and Lab Tech. Bear in mind that these women are working on production platforms, which are a little more cushy than drilling rigs. No matter what, offshore work is still very much a boys club and it will always be hard for a woman to get in there and also slug it out over the long term.
Those who think it can’t be done should not disturb those doing it
great pay for not much work and no degree…..the financial sevices industry. Stockbroking, insurance sales, finance broking, realeste, most types of intermediaries…
so i guess to narrow down – brokers and traders…
mostly rich kids who failed vce or didnt do too well and thus cldnt become doctors or lawyers.
Lots of nepotism. You need to look sharp and talk sharp and know instinctive things like what motivates people.
So if you want your kids to be rich (not my aim for my child) you could do worse than teach them the niceties of life, how to act, eat properly, and look good in a suit and then door knock all the industries advised above – even if there 17 and not yet finished school.
With the mining industry booming, I know some mining contractors willing to pay up to $80k/yr (5days on 5days off) for the privelige of training people to drive trucks. Almost enough to poach me from my accounting job.
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