I delivered food in Australia: I made thousands of dollars a day, and I was full of injuries
Author | Liu Chezai
Edit | Lu Yiming
Title Picture | "The Legend of Cheng Huan"
On social media, the experience of the Australian working holiday visa offers a sort of adult fairy tale.
On the one hand, it points to a very different experience of life. On the other hand, it implicitly promises a lower cost and depth of travel.
However, there seems to be some change in the post-COVID working holiday: the war in Europe has not stopped, distant Australia has also been affected, rents and prices have skyrocketed, the number of immigrants has reached an all-time high, and the expectation of working and vacationing while working in the context of the reversal of supply and demand in the labor market has been largely shattered by the difficult employment situation.
More than half a year ago, Tuna went to Australia on a working holiday visa and became a delivery worker. Her experiences and reflections on food delivery in Sydney may give us a glimpse into a certain reality of the distance and the wilderness. The following is the account of Tunna.
Food delivery in Sydney,
Is it considered "fairy work"?
When I sit in the office, "it's a big deal" is often on my lips as a joke.
As a migrant worker living in a first-tier city, delivery workers frequently appear at my doorstep, and even if they don't order takeout, I can always see them waiting at the front of each traffic light intersection (some of them simply don't wait), shuttling through the gaps of traffic (sometimes in the gaps of people), and leaning against the door of restaurants in groups (watching short videos).
At that time, I was still working in the media and knew some delivery riders, so it was not difficult to understand how delivery workers were "stuck in the system", not to mention the reports that they earned tens of thousands of dollars a month were already a few years ago. After the bonus period has passed, this job, which requires a lot of physical strength and energy, can hardly be called attractive.
At the end of last year, I came to Australia on a working holiday visa (WHV) and found that in the "Xiaohongshu Australia Zone", the profession of delivery person is still creating all kinds of "myths of getting rich".
Netizens share their experiences of delivering food in Australia. (Photo/Screenshot of Xiaohongshu)
After signing up as a delivery driver in Sydney, I have experienced the experience of earning 60 yuan (RMB) for a single order of walking and delivering food, receiving a subsidy from the platform for overtime delivery, not being fined for missing a pizza, and asking the store manager to eat dessert when picking up food late at night...... If you only look at this part, it's hard not to sigh that this is a "fairy job".
In the article "Delivery Riders, Trapped in the System" published by "People", it was mentioned that some delivery riders described their profession: "Delivering food is a race against death, competing with the traffic police, and being friends with red lights." "I haven't seen any of this in Sydney.
There is no such thing as a pervasive system for food delivery in Australia, and there is no need to race against death. I signed up for Uber Eats, and as one of the largest overseas delivery platforms, they don't have any requirements for delivery people, so you can be a laid-back delivery person.
Shortly after providing my passport, visa, and police clearance certificate online, and applying for an Australian Self-Employed Tax Number (ABN), I received a gift package delivered to my doorstep, including an insulated takeaway box, a reflective windbreaker and vest, a mobile phone holder and other items.
After registering, you will receive a free "Newcomer Gift Package" worth 137.5 Australian dollars (equivalent to 645 yuan), and you will need to pay for it to purchase again. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)
New South Wales, where Sydney is located, has strict requirements for car types on the road, and I was a little afraid of the complicated road conditions in Sydney when I first arrived, so I experienced "car-free" food delivery for two days before starting to rent a car. This type of food delivery is quite popular on Xiaohongshu, and riders who don't have a car earn money by walking and taking public transportation. This is only possible on platforms with no time limit.
I delivered a total of 8 orders in two days, earning 129.08 Australian dollars, which is about 606 yuan when converted into RMB. One of the orders took me almost an hour and a half to deliver, and Uber Eats gave me 32.58 Australian dollars (about 153 yuan), only to find out that not only will I not be deducted if the delivery time exceeds the estimated time, but I will also get more subsidies.
My guess is that while there is no employment relationship between Uber Eats and delivery workers, there are concerns that delivery workers falling below Australia's legal minimum hourly wage will attract criticism and protests. In an interview with SBS, Michael Kaine, national secretary of the Transport Workers Union of Australia, said, "Over the last 10 years, we have introduced a gig economy that has consciously pushed workers out of the protections we have built up over decades. Measures to protect workers include minimum wage, sick leave benefits, and ensuring you can get workers' compensation if something goes wrong. ”
(Photo/Unsplash)
For newly signed riders, Uber Eats also offers a steady stream of orders and generous rewards, and once the "newbie protection period" has passed, it becomes the norm to have no orders to pick up. Many delivery drivers sign up for multiple platforms to get new hire rewards and take orders at the same time, such as experienced Chinese riders, who usually "double open" Uber Eats and Panda Delivery.
In fact, car-free delivery is hard to sustain – unless you're faced with a customer waiting to be fed and you can hand over a melted ice cream or a cold pizza. So, after a long time of not finding a formal job, I finally rented a compliant electric bicycle at a Malaysian Chinese car rental agency in Sydney. Matching the surging number of food delivery troops, food delivery car rental has also become a hot business.
As long as you ride on the road, injuries are inevitable. I deliver takeout for eight or nine hours a day, and go home for more than an hour to rest and eat. After improving my driving skills, my income has risen from more than 200 yuan a day to nearly 1,000 yuan, but both I and the car's body are seriously worn.
We were hit by cars twice, once when the driver was reversing on the side of the driver and didn't see me trying to stop on the side of the road, and once when a car overtook me on the side and scratched my handlebars while driving on the road. Fortunately, it was the car that was injured in the end.
In addition to safety risks, electric vehicles running out of power are also a nightmare for delivery workers. Sydney, in particular, is known for its rugged terrain, and I had to walk and push my cart uphill when it came to steep slopes at large angles. If you ride until the bike runs out of power, you can only pray that a kind driver will take you back with the car.
There are also many pleasant moments when delivering food. Orders come from all directions, and I always take unheard of paths – taking small paths, taking shortcuts, sliding tires down long shady downhills, and doing things out of the ordinary – going against the road, going off the rails, running red lights, and leaving traffic jams behind.
I walked through a lot of parks, big lawns and cobweb-like paths in big parks, river paths or small iron bridges in small parks. I unlocked this strange city in the most efficient way possible, with a collection of hideaway bars crammed with young people with colorful hair and long lines of exotic dishes on Google Maps.
Sydney evening. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)
In the short term, food delivery has guaranteed my freedom and survival when I first arrived in a new country.
A profession that immigrants do
On the third day of delivery in Sydney, I was in pain almost all over my body: muscle pain, joint pain, buttock pain, a dozen bruises on my legs that had not yet subsided, and a few small open wounds on my hands and feet that were slightly infected.
I think I really lack physical experience in manual labor, and since I was a child, I have had a problem with unstable center of gravity and uncoordinated limbs, plus the broken car I rented was large and heavy, the hard cushions and body were loosely connected, and the slightest unevenness in the road made a sound like it was about to fall apart - almost all the injuries on my body were smashed by the delivery truck. It can be seen that in terms of function, I have achieved "the integration of people and vehicles" with it.
There is another side effect of food delivery: auditory hallucinations. On the third night, stimulated by the Uber Eats reward system, I had the sound of taking orders in my head from time to time, and sometimes I had to hold my phone to my ear to confirm it. But without exception, there is really no sound. The factory workers in Chaplin's movies who can't stop screwing are no exaggeration.
(Photo/Unsplash)
Another thing related to alienation is that I found that by wearing a helmet and a takeaway suit, you can become invisible from the crowd. You'll find that others look at you like a moving potted plant, the cheap and ugly kind. People try to communicate with you in the shortest words possible, as if you were a button triggered by a specific word.
At the same time, you'll feel like you're looking at the city more clearly than ever, as if you just need to ride by to see through the backgrounds and connections of these passers-by – you're becoming sensitive to class and race.
Sydney's delivery workers are both men and women, and they have deep and shallow skin, but few locals will work in this profession. I've met a lot of older Indians on the road, most of whom have been delivering food for several years. In the evening, I pushed my bicycle back and forth with a young Chinese student into the apartment building.
In the park, the life of a native Sydney. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)
Julia Kristeva, a scholar of Bulgarian origin who moved to France, said: "A foreigner is always the one who works. And the natives of the civilized world, developed countries, consider work to be vulgar and show careless aristocratic manners and willfulness". And outsiders who break into a new society are hardly capricious, and for immigrants who have "nothing and no one", labor becomes their "only property that can be exported duty-free" and "generally applicable inventory". While locals are always starting a business or preparing to start a business, my life is an infinite loop in finding a job and working.
Before I started delivering food, I read Hu Anyan's "I Deliver Couriers in Beijing", and then secretly decided to be like him and be a delivery man who loves to use his brain. After delivering takeout for a few days, I understood how rare Juan Yan was. Due to my poor riding skills, most of the time I had to concentrate on riding.
The smashing toucans and squashed pigeons in the middle of the road all reminded me of myself. Fear made me have no time to fill my mind with boundless reveries like before, and when I got home to rest, the physical labor that exceeded the physical load also made me have no intention to think about any profound questions, let alone record my own mental journey in detail.
What's more, according to Hu Anyan's own words, he is a courier with excellent work ability, but not only am I often injured when delivering food, but I also have a variety of bad deeds such as melting ice cream due to overtime delivery, and pizza sticking to a lump due to riding too bumpy, which is difficult to compare with him in terms of efficiency and customer satisfaction.
"I Deliver Couriers in Beijing" by Hu Anyan
Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2023-3
Before I came to Australia for a working holiday, I thought I could keep my head above water in high-intensity or mechanical work – a dualistic perspective that led to my ego. Delivering food made me realize that the body and mind as an organic whole should not be discussed separately, and that excessive detachment may help alleviate short-term pain and internal friction, but it can also lead to new pathologies.
In fact, physical work has never only consumed the body, and modern scientific and technological society has long formed a whole system of domestication and alienation of laborers. Delivery people often have a deep understanding of this, but individuals who fight alone are powerless to resist the huge rules of the game.
When I came to the legendary "wilderness", I found that there are indeed infinite possibilities in life, but "downward mobility" is more likely than "upward mobility".
Working holiday: a privilege,
Or is it a dream?
The Australian working holiday visa (WHV) program began in 1975 and was initially open to a small number of Commonwealth countries, but has since gradually expanded to include 48 partner countries and regions around the world. According to the Australian Department of Home Affairs, the aim of the programme is to "promote people-to-people connections between Australia and partner countries, especially young people".
But in reality, the primary purpose of the program is to use global labor cost differentials to fill the gap in the country's temporary labor force. These young temporary migrants not only alleviate the labor shortage and bring multiculturalism, but also alleviate the pressure of Australia's ageing population. Locals are getting older, but the working holidaymakers who arrive like migratory birds every year are always young.
Regarding the application restrictions for working holiday visas, the Australian government has different requirements for different countries. For applicants from Chinese mainland, the three most critical are: under 30 years old, bachelor's degree, able to communicate in English. Under this screening mechanism, most of the Chinese working holidaymakers who come to Australia are young urban people with relatively good educational backgrounds and information channels. But no matter what kind of vocational skills they have at home, most of them will have to start over and enter agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries, and low-end service industries when they come to Australia.
(Photo/Unsplash)
Being a hot air balloon guide, selling tickets to a national park, or being a coffee or bartending apprentice are my expectations for a working holiday before I set off. Delivering food is the reality that I am "cornered" after I landed.
After the lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic was lifted, a large number of working holidaymakers poured into Australia, and the migration population reached an all-time high. I just caught up with this special period, when the shortage of labor became difficult to find a job, and a position of packing fruit or supermarket cashier could receive hundreds of beautiful resumes. Some of the working holidaymakers who have landed in big cities have to go door-to-door in the city to find jobs, while others have to try their luck in desolate towns.
A quality labor force from overseas, either the strength or the money, or ideally both, and then wave their sleeves and not take away a cloud.
(Photo/Unsplash)
A report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), citing Tourism Australia data, stated: "Working holidaymakers spend more and stay longer in Australia than any other international tourist. On average, they spend $10,400 per trip for 149 nights. By comparison, other international visitors to Australia spend just $5,211 per trip and stay an average of just 32 nights. ”
Compared with the benefits that young temporary migrants bring to local communities, Australia's role as a host location for migrants is clearly still lacking in helping them integrate into local society. Through waves of cruel waves like "survival of the fittest", Australia only leaves the most suitable labor force for itself, and others inevitably have a sense of loss of "use and discard".
Xiang Biao pointed out in his book "Global "Body Hunting": "Globalization is not only to strengthen global connections, but also to rearrange and even re-strengthen the unequal relations in human society."
Developed countries have always profited from round after round of population movements, while the problem of migration has become increasingly acute and the winner-takes-all situation has raised questions about globalization.
However, on an individual level, the working holiday visa does bring extraordinary opportunities and experiences to young people. In addition to culture shock, implicit discrimination and oppression, the year's mobility not only brought them an international background and opportunities, but also greatly deepened their perception of themselves and the outside world.
Xiang Biao, "Global 'Body Hunting'".
Peking University Press, 2012-1
Scholar Shanthi Robertson has studied the migration of young people from various Asian countries to Australia. She observes that for today's young Asians, there is a sense of hope that cross-border mobility means more possibilities for life and livelihood. However, for these middle-class immigrants, who are neither at the bottom of society nor the "richest", opportunities are "more likely to be realized through uneven and fortuitous experiences" than through upward mobility to a "mobile elite" that has free choice about what they do, where they live, and how they live.
As digital nomads have become a trend, so have our imaginations of immigration. Compared with permanent immigration, which is a departure from home, the immigration method of staying for a short time and constantly changing places of residence is more in line with the ambition and curiosity of today's young people. Migration is becoming what cultural historian Nikos Papastergiadis calls "a never-ending movement with multiple routes and uncertain consequences".
In an age of turmoil in the world and in the heart, a working holiday is more of an adventure game than a shrewd act of self-investment. And no matter how many times I am given the opportunity to choose again, I will say: do it again.
Proofreading: Meet
Operation: Lu Zirui
Typesetting: Duan Meiyu
[1] Delivery rider, trapped in the system, Lai Youxuan, character
[2] Strangers to Ourselves, Julia Kristeva, Columbia University Press
[3] Working Holiday Maker visa program report (30 June 2023), Australian Department of Home Affairs
[4]分析：打工度假者每年对澳洲贡献良多，如何确保他们能在2022年回来？，Sarah Gardiner，ABC中文[5]Temporality in Mobile Lives: Contemporary Asia–Australia Migration and Everyday Time, Shanthi Robertson, Bristol University Press[6]Best Practice in Temporary Labour Migration for Development: A perspective from Asia and the Pacific, Graeme Hugo, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.全球“猎身”：世界信息产业和印度的技术劳工，项飚，北京大学出版社