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Work Hard, Play Harder!
7/12/2011 1:51:28 p.m.
I’ve attended quite a few camping shows over the past couple of months and I always enjoy chatting with motorhome aficionados and hearing about their adventures. One of the things that’s struck me recently is the amount of people who are taking to the road and earning money as they travel. There’s the usual seasonal work such as fruit picking, farm work and so on, and of course thanks to technology, a huge number of people now work from a ‘mobile office’ which can be literally anywhere which has internet access.
What really tickled me, however, were the people I came across who had what can only be described as unusual occupations – such as the golf course designer, the cat groomer, the nocturnal nature photographer, the professional kite surfer and the sports statistician. These make my own job, although immensely enjoyable and fulfilling, seem rather dull by comparison.
One of our staff spoke to a lovely guy at a show earlier in the year who had the unusual but necessary job of relocating the bodies of those who’ve passed on in another state and need to be returned to their families. He regaled us with (slightly morbid) tales of his interstate exploits and according to him “you have no idea how common it is” to be sitting next to a vehicle holding a corpse when you’re stopped at the lights. I’m not sure exactly whether he had work in mind when he was looking at our vehicles – I guess you could carry quite a few bodies in a 6 berth motorhome! The mind boggles.
A quick search under ‘unusual jobs’ on Google found a whole range of weird and wonderful employment opportunities. You can work as a secret shopper, sewer inspector, snake handler, roo poo picker-upper and – my favourite – crime scene cleaner (a prerequisite for this is having “no qualms with gory scenes”!).
I have held my own share of unusual roles, the most notable of which was when I was 13 working on the daily bread run in my home town of Dublin. I recall travelling along Dublin’s notorious Sheriff St on the back of the bread truck – Mr Murray, my boss, was up the front driving, and my job was to stand on the back of the truck and swing a big pole to keep the Sheriff St kids from jumping up on to the back and getting their hands on the bread! I can’t recall my actual title but it should have been something like Bread Bouncer, Dough Basher or perhaps Bread-stick Wielder.
A quick poll around the office shows I’m not alone in having done unusual work. Our marketing manager, a New Zealander (but we don’t hold that against her – much!) once had a job at Auckland’s Eden Park where she was paid to sit next to the NZ cricket team during test matches and keep the fans away. Being paid to watch cricket – it sounds almost too good to be true! We also have a staff member who travels around the country in her motorhome working out of our various different depots as needed. And we’re currently looking for a part-time motorhome mechanic to work out of our Cairns depot at certain times of the year. It’s the perfect job for a grey nomad (check out the Careers with KEA page on www.keacampers.com.au to find out more about this role).
How does all this relate to campervans and motorhomes? Well, it’s clear – there are loads of opportunities out there to combine being a nomad with earning a crust. Just another reason to give up that day job and start living the dream!
If you’re keen to get out on the road and earn as you go, here are some websites that may be of interest:
National Harvest Labour Information Service: jobsearch.gov.au/harvesttrail
Workabout Australia: www.workaboutaustralia.com.au
Jobaroo: www.jobaroo.com
Grey Nomads Employment: www.greynomadsemployment.com
If you have done an unusual job from your campervan or motorhome, I’d love to hear about it. Email the details to me at goodlife@keacampers.com and I’ll share them with all our readers in my next column. The people judged by my team to have done the most unusual jobs will win a KEA cap.
You can find me this month at the South Coast Caravan, Camping & Holiday Expo in Batemans Bay from 4-6 November. Come and say gidday at the KEA stand if you’re in the neighbourhood.
Safe travels,
Norman