When Cal McIlwaine was 28, he was working in Lidl stocking shelves and delivering Amazon parcels on the weekend. He was earning around £500 per week and struggling to save any money. His career in nightclub promotions had ended due to COVID, and he’d been working wherever he could to earn money purely to live.
That’s when he researched well-paid jobs abroad and found FIFO (Fly In, Fly Out) employment in Australia, with plenty of roles open in remote mines, where workers stay on site for fixed shifts, often two to three weeks, before flying back out for a break.
In 2023, he got a working holiday visa, took a one-way flight from his home in Belfast to Perth, and within 28 days, he’d landed a job with no experience working as a serviceman on a mine. “At home I wasn’t progressing, I wasn’t saving any money, I wasn’t able to travel. There was zero chance of me getting a house or anything like that. I was in the grind, in the rat race, and I was having thoughts that I needed out of this.”
His first job involved working three weeks of 12-hour shifts back-to-back followed by a week off. His role was as a serviceman, which included driving around the site in a service lorry filled with diesel, grease, engine oil, coolant and visiting all of the machines to fill them up, grease them, check the oil level and service them.
For the three working weeks, he lived on “camp” among 1800 other workers, many of whom were also in their twenties. A lot of people were Australian, but the rest of the group were either from the UK, Ireland or New Zealand. “The first couple of days is crazy; there are big machines, it’s super hot, loads of flies, it’s like landing on Mars. It was horrible to be thrown into the deep end. It’s an alien environment from Ireland and the UK; it’s totally different, dusty, and barren.”
Many workers in his first job didn’t last long, with some leaving after a week, but he stuck at it despite being fatigued and exhausted for the financial reward and his desire to travel. McIlwaine was earning around £2000 per week after tax at the entry level, which was the same as his monthly salary in Ireland.
The on-site costs are zero. “It’s like being on a little workers’ village where everything is taken care of, there’s a gym, your room is tidied by cleaning staff, and coffee is free. You slave away like a little worker bee and then get a week off to go wherever you want.”
McIlwaine is a serviceman on site for the machinery, which he landed with no prior qualificationsHe worked for nine months on his first site before taking a year off to travel for the first time with his earnings of $140,000 (£74,000). He went to Indonesia for two months, then Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and New Zealand before returning for another year of working. “I lived like an absolute king, doing whatever I wanted every single day, every excursion. I went scuba diving, mountain biking, every trip you could do I did.”
When McIlwaine told his plan to his family in Belfast, “they all thought I was nuts”. His friends back home have since bought houses, got married and have children, and wanted more “traditional” lives, but he says he “didn’t want that at all”.
His current site is around 70 per cent male, and most workers are from Australia and New Zealand, followed by the Irish and British. “It’s not like a super dark hole like people imagine a mining role is. There’s a lot of super technology; it’s super advanced and modern; it’s not like a grim coal mine.”
Australia is one of the most recognised places in the world for its mining industry due to its expansive land mass and metal resources. In the year to April 2025, 13,500 left Ireland for Oz, the highest number since 2013, and in May 2026 ONS reported that more than 79,000 UK-born people were granted an Australian working holiday visa in the year to June 2025. “The number of factors pushing people away is mental. It’s good weather, and you can be paid a lot more money.”
Now, aged 32, McIlwaine is on his fourth site, a nickel mine in Western Australia, working 14 days straight (which is around 84 hours per week) followed by a week off. He’s earning similar money, around $150,000 (around £79,000), but working less than his first rotation. His current site is well-maintained with a gym, a recreational room with pool tables, tennis courts and a football pitch. Food is served in the style of a buffet for breakfast and dinner, with things like eggs and bacon and spaghetti bolognese on offer.
His typical day starts at 3:50am, when he gets ready for work and has breakfast before leaving camp to go to site at 5:15am. Then, from 5:30am he works 12 hours alongside others; there are hundreds of jobs, some are in the mines, others are in mechanics or electrical work. He then showers, has dinner, and enjoys an hour of recreational time, which he spends making social media videos and goes to bed for 9pm. His room, which he says is like “a glorified prison” is small, with a single bed, a fridge, an ensuite with a shower and a small desk. Although it’s small, he does say “you’re not really going anywhere” and he doesn’t need more than that.
‘The site is around 70 per cent male, and most workers are from Australia and New Zealand, followed by the Irish and British,’ says CalAll time off work has to be spent off-site, as other workers are coming in to stay in the rooms. The flight from site to Perth is just over an hour-long flight; from there, many workers travel to Bali and Thailand. McIlwain now rents a house in Perth for $700 (£370) per week, and stays there when he’s not on camp.
Of course there are cons. “It’s very hard for people to get used to, but if you learn to adapt and stick with it and get into a good routine of sleeping, eating well and working, there is money to be earned and it’s doable. You learn to get accustomed to the 12-hour days, but it’s fatiguing; it can be non-stop and isolating. You fly for one to two hours into the outback, and outside the plane window there’s nothing as far as you can see. You miss out on a lot, like friends’ birthdays, events or Christmas.
“The people you work with are luck of the draw. My first site was young people and a great work environment; the second was older people. I was the youngest and least experienced. It was a bit like working with dads and grandads. The camps do put on as much as they can for entertainment; there are live music nights and things you can do, but most people finish their shift, go to the gym or the bar and go to bed.”
He recently launched his own FIFO & Travel Club, Skool, a community where people can meet others in Australia and make friends, and he offers his tips and advice on getting into the industry online or through his e-Books.
Now, after almost three years in Australia, McIlwaine’s holiday working visa is coming to an end. He’s hoping to get sponsored by his company to stay. If not, he’s planning to travel Southeast Asia before doing a working holiday in New Zealand.
He has one piece of advice. “If it doesn’t work out, you can go home where everything is exactly the same as it was before you left,” he says. “You may as well take a punt.”
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