As I was saying in the previous post, regardless of all the disappointments, I kept on looking forward. I knew I would end up getting a job in Cairns. Thus, I went to my third and final hostel in Cairns: “Caravella Backpackers”. The hostel setup was nice, with a big pool, a chill-out area, some tables and benches and different blocks for the different rooms. The fridges were not working very well and the kitchen wasn’t very clean.
The last point improved, but the first one remained until I left Cairns lol. One of the first people I met was Giovanni, an Italian guy who would become my roommate and one of my best friends in Australia. A couple of days later I met another Italian guy, Francesco, who also would also become my roommate and one of my best friends in Australia 🙂
I met people from many countries in the world like: China (Nǐ hǎo Jessie!), Sweden (Hej Lotten!), the Netherlands (Hallo Ash!), France (Salut Camille, Sophie and all the conards who won the World Cup!), Russia (Privet Victoria!), Poland (Dzień dobry Jorge!), Germany (Halo Nicola and Maria!), Belgium (Hoeijendagh Mike!), Canada (hello Pablo!), Spain (or Catalonia) (Hola Xènia!), and many more. I started to make some friendships and I felt like I had found “my place” for the third time (after Sydney and Mooroopna). The only problem was I didn’t have a job yet and I was running out of money.
I did what I know how to do best: I kept on trying. It was funny to see the reactions of some managers as they told me “but wait a minute, I know you, you were here yesterday right?”. Yes, I was there yesterday and many other days but “the season” hadn’t started yet… I started to walk and drive my car through the outskirts of Cairns and, eventually, one day, I got a phone call from “Jamdrop Cafe”.
The manager, “Alan”, was very nice, and he told me he was looking for someone to work as some sort of all-rounder. He was looking for someone who could help the two cooks he had, but also who could help cleaning tables, bringing orders and, of course, washing dishes, which is something you will have to do pretty much in any kitchen before they see you ready.
Doing a trial at Jampdrop Cafe
I liked the cafe itself and the vibe. It was small but the menu was pretty wide, serving anything from toasts, to burgers, to milkshakes… The people working there (a couple of girls from Japan, a girl from Thailand, a girl from Ireland and a girl from Spain) were very nice. I was happy with the kitchen part so I could improve on my cooking skills, but also with the waiter stuff to improve on my waiting skills. I did the trial and he told me he liked the way I worked and he would like to hire me. Finally some good news!
The only problem was that the reason he was looking for someone was because the girl working there got injured some weeks ago and she hadn’t been able to return yet. So, he couldn’t guarantee me that I would be working there for a long time. It could be that the girl would never come back (she should had been back some weeks ago but she didn’t) or that she would come back the next day. Since I didn’t have many other options, I decided to trust my “luck” and go for it.
In the beginning, he couldn’t guarantee me either the amount of hours I needed, which was something between 35-40. I needed that amount of hours both to make some money but also to be able to apply to my second year visa. He told me that if the girl didn’t come back I could stay and maybe, little by little, as the business got busier, I could get more hours.
I spent a lot of time washing dishes (nothing new for me by then) but I also started to learn how to prepare some of the food they were doing as well as to serve the customers. One of the best things about the job was the schedule. It was every day from 07:00 to 15:00, better than my office job in Spain lol. As I was starting to get the hold of it, after my fourth day, I had to stop. The girl was coming back.
So, once again, I had no job. I have had a couple of trials and work in a cafe for 4 days and I was back in the nothingness. It had been almost a month since I arrived in Cairns and after trying everything I knew, I didn’t have any job. It might be the world telling me I couldn’t stay in Cairns but I didn’t pay much attention to it.
Working at Cairns Convention Centre
The following days I kept on doing what I had been doing for a month and, on Tuesday, I got a call from Hays (one of the recruitment agencies) asking if I wanted to work in an event that would take place at “Cairns Convention Centre” on Thursday. Along with Hays, there were two more recruitment agencies: Staffing Solution and TopEnd Consulting. Staffing Solution was the one that told me that for the interview I needed to buy an uniform. I didn’t take them very seriously because I thought it would be a waste of money buying an uniform just for the interview. I was wrong.
On Thursday afternoon I showed up at CCC (Cairns Convention Center) and I met some of the people who would be working with me as well as the people in charge, who explained us the setup of the event, the tables, how the groups were distributed and what each group was doing. In the beginning they put me with the “tray” group but I told them I wasn’t very confident so they changed me to plates. In the end though they said they didn’t need anyone else on plates so I did the tray work, except for it wasn’t a regular tray but a bigger one, something called a “jack tray”.
I did the job properly and I didn’t drop any plates but I ended up exhausted. I didn’t know how to properly carry the jack tray so I had to use my strength to make up for the lack of technique. Eventually I learnt how to properly carry it. It was like helping out carrying the saints or the virgins in the Spanish parades 🙂
The “good” thing about the recruitment agencies is that most of the times they are overstuffed and so the pace is not very high. That can also become a bad thing, like it was in my case, because you feel like they are paying you for doing nothing and you are trying to do something. When the are big events like horse races, weddings or football games, they will call you almost for sure. It is difficult not to do it right so normally they will call you again. The bad thing about the recruitment agencies is that you have to wait for big events before being called. You normally don’t have a regular schedule like you would have in a bar or a restaurant.
Because of the above, I signed up with all three recruitment agencies. The most successful ones though were Staffing Solution (hello Bianca!) and TopEnd (bonjour Oceane!). Oceane even gave us a free training on how to carry plates, how to carry the tray and how to serve wine :).
Going back to Port Douglas for good?
Since I didn’t have a job I decided to go back and try my luck in Port Douglas. I had already been there and I knew it a little bit. Because of that, I didn’t feel like I wanted to stay in Port Douglas but in Cairns. The way I saw it, Cairns had more places to have fun and the price of accommodation was way cheaper. But, since I had already spent a month in Cairns and I hadn’t found any job, it might be that if I got a job, I will have to stay in Port Douglas.
With these thoughts in mind, on Friday the 22nd of June, I left Caravella Backpackers and some of the friends I had made there, and I drove my car to Port Douglas. Even being way smaller than Cairns, it looked like it had more job opportunities. All the bars and restaurants were completely full. After speaking to a few managers from different restaurants I got some interviews/trials.
The first one was a trial as a cook in an “Spanish” tapas restaurant. The name of the bar was “Seabean”. The head chef and the sous chefs were very good and kind. I would say the level was a little bit too high for me but I think I did a good performance. We cooked tons of small paella dishes. I wasn’t used to cook paella that way but I was happy I learnt something else. They were also cooking croquetas and other very nice food. The head chef told me they had some other people coming in for trials and he would get back to me next week.
Before going on the trial though I spent sometime in one of my favourite areas in Port Douglas: the esplanade next to the barbeque area, where you can enjoy some amazing views of the ocean and palm trees. There I spoke to some guys from Chile and, after my trial, I ended up having some beers with them. After that, I found a quite spot and I went to sleep in my car.
On Saturday I went to an interview in a restaurant but I didn’t like the job offer very much so I skipped it. I checked out some other restaurants and they kept my resume while stating that they were looking for people. The vibe seemed more positive than in Cairns. I went to a bar at night to watch one of the World Cup games and I ended up meeting some strangers and having some beers with them.
On Sunday morning I went to the weekly market to see the different booths they had arranged all the way from the parking lot to the barbeque area. Anything from jewelry to food to clothes to massage. One of the coolest thing I saw was a guy riding a bike to get the juice out of the sugar cane. After seeing that guy I somehow felt like him. I had been spending a long time trying to get a full glass of sugar cane juice (a job) and so far I had been getting just some drops. But, like with the glass, I also needed plenty of drops (“failed” trials and new skills learnt) before being able to enjoy the whole glass of juice, and I started to feel I was almost there 😉
Since I didn’t know many people in Port Douglas and since I had to wait for responses from the different managers I spoke or work with in Port Douglas, I decided to go back to Cairns. I remember it was a rainy evening when I arrived. I also remember how happy I was to see some of my friends and how we prepared a huge bucket of guacamole for dinner.
It had to be Cairns, maktub!
On Monday morning my “luck” changed. I got a phone call from a brewery that had just opened in Cairns after the success it had in Port Douglas: “Hemingway’s Brewery”. I went there to have an interview and met some other people in the same situation, one of them was “Ariadna”, a girl I had met while working as a jacktray at CCC. Basically, the venue had opened like a week ago but it had so much success that they were looking for a second batch of employés. They asked me some questions and made me carry three plates, carry a tray and pour some beer (some skills I already had from my previous “failed” trials). They told me they would call me if they wanted me to work with them. That same evening, back at the hostel, I got a call from them asking if I wanted to join them and work at the brewery. I said “yes” and, “just like that”, my story in Cairns started.
Final tips on getting a job in Cairns
“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want”. As I had been mentioning throughout the whole post, it wasn’t easy for me to get a job in Cairns. Nevertheless, like everything in life, I would say the key to my “success” was “persistance”. If you were to look for work in Cairns I would think you would be mostly looking for hospitality or construction jobs. I don’t have much experience when it comes to look for construction jobs since that wasn’t a choice for me if I wanted to extend my visa. To extend my visa I needed to work in hospitality or in farm. There are not many farms in Cairns (not to say none) but there are plenty of farms in the surroundings like Innisfail (mostly banana farm) and Mareeba (banana, avocado and lemon).
If you want to look for farm work in Cairns’ surroundings I would either start looking before getting there (through websites like Facebook, Gumtree or just by typing “farm work in ____________” in Google) or I would drive my car there and start checking all the farms, asking to speak to the people in charge. I met plenty of people who did that and got a job like that. You can also go to some camping or caravan parks, where most of the backpackers working in the farm are staying, and you can ask if they know about any job vacancies. For a deeper insight on how to look for farm work you can take a look at my previous post: “Farm work in Australia”.
When it comes to finding a job in hospitality in Cairns, I would say your best options would be:
- Print out tons of resumes and go hand them in to every single manager in every single venue in Cairns. The way I did it was I checked the map of Cairns and saw where most of the bars and restaurants where. I spent the morning checking all the venues on the streets vertical to the lagoon and then I would do the same with the venues on the streets parallel to the lagoon in the evening. Don’t let the fact to see other people doing the same or managers not being available intimidate you. Just keep on trying.
- Sign up with all the hospitality recruitment agencies in town. I did some research and found out about Staffing Solution and TopEnd Consulting. They were the two big agencies when it came to hospitality jobs. I also found out that Hays could help with hospitality jobs (I thought it was just an agency for “qualified” jobs) and so I signed up with all three of them. I remember I felt like I would be wasting my money when buying an uniform just to go to the interview with Staffing Solution, but I was wrong. You can buy a cheap one in Kmart and, if they ask you to go to an interview, it is almost guaranteed that they will eventually call you to work. If you don’t have much experience working as a waiter, I really encourage you to go to the TopEnd office and speak to Oceane, who would help you out with a free training. I liked working for these companies because I had the chance to work in events I hadn’t work before, like an Indian wedding, a horse race, or a scientific award ceremony.
- Go online and look for all the accommodation options in Cairns and in its surroundings (in case you want to wide your options). I remember looking in Booking and Google Maps and finding all the hostels and hotels around. Then, I would write a generic email asking for work (with my resume attached) and then I would BCC (in case you don’t know what I’m talking about: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-add-bcc-recipients-in-gmail-1171985) every one of them into a single email, rather than writing one email to each one of them. I remember I did that for the accommodation options in Cairns, but even for the ones in Port Douglas (even if it is a very small town it is full of accommodation options, especially luxury ones!) and for the ones in Townsville! (yes, that far away, I was desperate :/).
- Pay an agency to help you get a job. I never used that option and I particularly didn’t like it too much. There are plenty of agencies in Cairns that promise you to find you a job within a certain time frame if you pay them some money. I heard people talking about how grateful they were to them because they got them great jobs but I also heard the opposite. Most of the jobs these agencies find you are remote jobs, and by “remote” I mean it might be you and nothing else within 500 Km. If you feel really desperate and you don’t care where to work, you might give it a try.
To sum up, I wasn’t super lucky and it took me a long time to get a job in Cairns. That being said, I’m pretty happy with the final outcome and I hope you get to enjoy Cairns as much as I did!
