Make your holiday work

By RICK WALLACE

You're stuck at your desk at 7pm and a teetering pile of orders that should have been processed yesterday stands between you and the door. Tragic Tony from accounts is waiting on the phone to bawl you out, and there's nothing in the fridge for dinner.

It's probably times like these that many of us consider tossing it all in to go overseas for a spell.

The good news is that there are a number of options for people who want to make travel their lifestyle for a while.

The first and most obvious involves using your savings to travel somewhere cheap and enjoy it while it lasts. Most of us are reluctant to give up our hard-earned cash to do this. But there are other ways to relocate abroad, although wherever you go there's really no such thing as a free lunch. While you might leave the rat race behind, you will have to do some sort of work to sustain yourself. One of the most popular ways to do it is with a working holiday visa. Many people will have seen a gradual exodus of friends or colleagues jetting off to London. Each year 7000 New Zealanders go on a working holiday in Britain and many others go to Australia to work.

But it is not so well known that New Zealand has working holiday visa arrangements with a further 14 countries as well as Britain (no visa is needed for New Zealanders working in Australia and vice-versa).

When I went overseas earlier this year, as a journalist, I focused on countries where English is the main language - Ireland, Canada and Britain. But the scheme also includes France, The Netherlands, Sweden, Singapore, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Chile, Denmark, Uruguay and South Korea.

The programme offers a choice of four continents and wide range of lifestyles, cultures and environments to adopt for a year (or two in some cases).

I eventually settled on a year in Ireland and a year in Canada for my working holiday, after discovering that at 29 I was too old for Britain - although the age limit has since been raised to 30.

The general idea of the scheme is that you will spend part of the time working and part holidaying, so the visas usually allow you to come and go from your chosen home abroad without restriction.

But many countries will place limitations on you to prevent you obtaining full-time work, to protect their own citizens' jobs (although these limitations have been scrapped in Britain) - so be aware you might find yourself having to take casual or itinerant work, or change employers after a few months.

Usually the same restrictions and privileges extended to you are also offered to people in your chosen destination who want to work and holiday in New Zealand.

My advice, based on my experience and that of friends, is to try to get work within your profession where the rules permit it. The traditional holiday jobs - waiting, bar work and retail - offer low pay in Britain and Ireland and many of the other countries mentioned. Having little money might not be a problem when you are holidaying in Asia, but many of the countries in the working holiday scheme are among the costliest in which to live in the world and New Zealand dollars don't go far.

Do lots of research before you go and talk to as many people as you can about work opportunities - this certainly helped me to find work as a journalist in Ireland, where the economy is grinding to a halt after five years of stellar growth.

If you do decide to take the plunge, be aware that red tape and petty bureaucracy abound, perhaps more so overseas than at home. So have all your paperwork in order, get a reference from your landlord, as well as your employer, and a letter of introduction from your bank. In Britain opening a bank account is surprisingly difficult (something to do with fighting money laundering), so much so that I found a job before I was able to open an account to get paid.

If you are over the age limit for the working holiday visa option and still want to go overseas there are plenty of other options. You might be lucky enough to work in the health sector, engineering or teaching, where contracts are offered by foreign firms that will often organise a sponsored visa for you.

Many problems are solved by having either a British or EU passport through having ancestors born overseas. This will more than likely give you unrestricted rights to work in Britain and some EU countries.

Other options include working as a nanny, teaching English or being a camp counsellor in the United States. There's also plenty of opportunity for volunteer work with groups such as Volunteers Abroad and various cultural exchange programmes.

There is too little space to go into these choices in any detail here, but most are canvassed thoroughly in Bryan Havenhand's book Working Overseas (available through www.globalexchange.com.au).

* Rick Wallace is an Australian on his OE living and working in Ireland.

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