Travelling and finding work in Australia
Combining work and travel was something I have always wanted to do, so when my partner (Laura) had to travel to Brisbane for her final year of PhD, I was eager to follow. I finished my contract with SharkNinja and cleared out my apartment, packed my bags, and hopped on the plane to begin a once in a lifetime opportunity to live and work in Australia. What was supposed to be a 6-month visit turned into 12-month long adventure, and I finally arrived back in the UK in October 2023.
Moving to a new country for the first time can be daunting, but luckily the language barrier wasn't a problem (bar the few odd phrases). We arrived with our first month pre-booked in an Airbnb, hoping that this would give us enough time to find a rental during the unfolding rental crisis. There were challenges - at one time we were attending in excess of 10 inspections per week, one of which had 40-50 people in that group alone - but with perseverance we managed to secure a 1 bed apartment close to the city.
We also did a lot of travelling, including to New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Whitsundays Islands... but more about that in the next post. I'm trying to keep this one short!
Work
I managed to secure work pretty quickly - in fact I started not one, but two jobs within the first month of arrival! For the first five months, I worked four days a week for the Brisbane based product design consultancy, Designworks, and freelanced 1 day per week at a local battery start-up, Vaulta. Vaulta CEO Dominic and I had already had a brief introduction and had spoken about the possibility of some freelance work over a zoom call before I had left the UK and It sounded like a great start-up to be involved in. I was grateful to both Designworks and Vaulta for supporting me to pursue both opportunities, and their flexibility that afforded me time to travel.
This is the Designworks Australia office. The team were a great bunch to work with, and made me feel at home whilst settling into a new country.
As a designer at a consultancy you are required to call upon and develop many skillsets to tackle the project brief. Projects and clients varied from day to day – from developing mechanical concepts for portable fitness equipment, then 3D printing and testing them, to rendering photorealistic scenes in keyshot the next day, and finally, presenting them to customers.
The dynamic nature of the work environment and variety of projects was refreshing, also rather conveniently, just across the road was Urban Climb. Bouldering after work soon became my favourite way to stretch out and relax.
After 5 months at Designworks, and fitting in a Christmas break to New Zealand, I was offered more regular work at Vaulta to keep up with the growth of the company. The problems they are trying to solve, and the drive of CEO Dominic were an inspiring journey to be involved in. Fairly quickly, the size of the core team more than tripled to deliver products and meet customer demand, with the addition of Eugene, Eren, Sergio J and Sergio G, Kelly, Vienna and Michael, all playing an important role; developing and optimising the technology, driving sales, assembling and installing batteries, logistics, purchasing and accounting, the list goes on!
Whilst at Vaulta, my job was to design new products coming through the pipeline, and make continuous improvements to existing products. This involved concept design, building the 3D CAD model assembly, designing sheet metal and plastic parts for manufacture including preparing the 2D drawings and manufacturing files. Following an iterative design, build, test process, but in as fewer major (co-ordinated) steps as possible, and involving the assembly staff "hands-on" in making design decisions, I was able to create products that achieve the aims of Vaulta; to be locally manufactured in Australia and be easy to repair and recycle, thus extending the life of the battery.
My year at Vaulta, unfortunately, had to eventually come to an end. My Visa was expiring, Laura and I had both decided to stick the the original plan and honour the promises we had made to family and friends back home - which meant not getting too accustomed with the warm weather, incredible beaches, wetsuit-less surfing, and come home to a wonderfully drizzly Britain in October.
At least we can find a good Devonshire cream tea here and the wildlife won't try to kill us.
Final Thoughts
I realise I am privileged to have had the opportunity to travel and work in Australia at the age of 30. The flexibility of my job as a contractor, and the experience and design skillset I have gained over the years, had given me the ability to find work doing what I love doing while having the freedom to travel in between. While I reflect on the hard work it has taken me to get to this position in my life and career, I realise access to such opportunity is not equal for everyone in this world. I’ll continue to seize every opportunity given to me, but I also want to seek ways to make a step towards levelling up opportunities of others.
Finally, as is customary in Australia, I’d like to end on a note to acknowledge the Turrbal and Jagera people, the traditional owners of lands upon which Brisbane City is built, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. It's been a pleasure to call this land "home" for the past 12 months.
Now, on to the next chapter!