Australian Girls See New Zealand Through Their Work

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26847, 11 August 1948, Page 6

Australian Girls See New Zealand Through Their Work

A remarkable number of Australian girls appear to have discovered that the easiest and most economical way in which they can tour New Zealand is to work their way round the country. Hotels 'at almost all tourist resorts have benefited from this trend, and many popular hotels are almost completely staffed at times with such transient workers. The hotels are doubly fortunate, in that thqy also are being called pn to cater for many of these visitors who prefer to work for a time in the cities and then take a holiday at the resorts. It has been suggested that the Australians are the equivalent of Steinbeck’s “ Okies,” the migratory workers of “ The Grapes of Wrath.”

Hotel employment is not the sole scope of many of the Australians. Some are office workers, some come for seasonal fruit picking and other outdoor work, while others are adaptable enough to vary their employment. Two Australian girls told the Daily Times in Queenstown at the week-end that they had tried working as nursing aids in a Christchurch hospital for four months—“ the most strenuous four months we have ever spent.” Normally they'seek office work, but they decided to try the hospital position for a change, and to take advantage of the accommodation which Went with the jobs. “ I’ve seen most of Australia by wQrking my way around the country and I thought I might as well see New Zealand while I was at it,” one girl told the Daily Times. “I think I’ll try Western Australia when I go back across the Tasman.” Another Australian girl in Dunedin recently had spent the summer months hop, tobacco and fruit picking in the,Nelson district, and had since visited Rotorua, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, with side

excursions to tourist resorts, by working in offices, as an ho’tel receptionist, as a store clerk and as a part-time “baby watcher.” Pay and working conditions are no % t of particular attraction to these migratory workers, for in most cases they could get higher paid permanent positions in Australia. The 'lure is the traditional “grass is greener across the,fence” theory, and a desire to see something of another country. One Australian girl who visited Dunedin recently was a qualified chemist and had seen the country by acting as “ locum ” for resident chemists who wished to go on holiday for a few weeks. She was hoping to go on to England after she had completed her engagements here. “I’m beginning to wonder whether there are not more Australians here than New Zealanders,” commented one girl from across the Tasman. “Where ever I have gone I seem to have run Into lots of other Australians.” Employers, hard pressed for labour, however, are quite happy to see this ten dency continue, for transient employees are better than no employees at all.