Fly-in fly-out

So I've been balancing both staying in Sydney and doing that work as well.

So at what point did FIFO dentistry become appealing to you?

I always wanted to do a form of regional work.

As I said, I was very lucky that I had a job lined up in Sydney that was very hard to say no to.

I'm happy to do this if it's something that you're interested in.

And seven years later, I think we're both very happy that we both made that arrangement.

So what was that first FIFO experience like? It was always a bit preluding because I remember the week that I went to meet the team and, you know, take the photos for the website and all of that.

This was when the really bad fires were happening in Victoria.

Perfect.

FIFO Nan, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for inviting me.

What a surprise.

what

the heck, mom? You know, and they're 31 and 32.

But yeah, I never really knew TikTok until I started doing FIFO Nan.

Yeah.

He reckons there's a bit of an elephant in the room here.

And Rob says he's talking with backpackers working in vineyards down in the southwest and almost every one of them is trying to score a FIFO job in the mining sector in our north.

And there's been zero talk about this.

How can we be expected to maintain our seasonal workforce when it's completely okay for backpackers to get a high-paying job on the mines? How about looking at an adjustment that sees backpackers not being able to work on the mines but can do farm and regional work? Thank you for your contribution, Rob.

But I know that, you know, it does mean that there are going to be additional jobs.

Obviously, you touched on it before as well in terms of the FIFO.

I guess that that is a bit of a misconception.

But do we find that a lot of the workers in the territory actually stay living in the territory?

Look, there's a lot of people that are very much attracted to, you know, you've got that swing lifestyle and so you may be FIFOing out to a remote area like MacArthur of the Mine, but they definitely love to come back to Darwin and their surroundings and spend their week off fishing and things like that.

So we definitely have a really good lifestyle to sell to people that want to do the jobs in the Territory.

Well, Kat Tillmouth, the Chief Executive of the Minerals Council of Australia's Northern Territory Branch, always good to catch up with you.

But what made you choose mining as the next stage for you?

I had someone very close to me get into FIFO and mining, and that was kind of the follow-on.

And then once I learned about the veterans program at Hancock Iron Ore, it was very easy to transition from Army into the FIFO lifestyle.

It's that thing where, obviously, Mrs Reinhardt, as we all know, has put a lot of effort and focus into veterans, particularly some of that housing that she's created.

But also something that we know is so obvious, right, which is that the pathway from service to a working life has to be built.

But the opportunity they have for, like, sport, art, schooling, it's just a really good opportunity for younger families to come.

Mm.

Cody, the FIFO of it all, where are you based? So I live in Perth, actually, up in Turok.

I've got 40-year-olds, people who retired at 40 and thrived, and I've got others in their 70s really struggling.

We've got a guy who was doing FIFO in the mines up to six months ago, never wanted to leave.

He was starting to physically upset him, but he just loved the camaraderie in the camp and and then went back to work one swing and was made redundant.

And he's just devastated.

Australian families are so diverse.

We have shift workers, FIFO workers.

We have families who have children with medical conditions.

We have a lot of rural and regional remote families who can't access a childcare centre because there isn't one on the corner of their street.

And I think as you know, I've got a three and a five year old, so I'm in it too.

What makes families special and what makes Australian families special is that we are all different.

We do have, you know, families who are FIFO workers, who are married to shift workers, and we have people balancing all of these different things.

We have cultural differences across our country.

Indigenous people within the community carry a certain... vulnerability on the background of their trauma and their mental health.

Now we have a whole community of FIFO workers who are flying in, flying out.

A lot of our big mining communities now are staffed by people who are coming in and working for a fortnight and then going home for a fortnight.

which brings its own challenges to rural communities and clearly can be a really difficult lifestyle to sustain with your family back home.

And, you know, we talked about like having kids and things like that.

And he just said, I don't want to be a FIFO dad.

And I was like, yeah, I don't want you to be a FIFO dad.

So he just, you know, asked his company that he was working for, like which have plants or he's a chemical engineer.

They had plants all over Australia.