06.17.10

Well, Today we spent another long day looking for jobs. Everyone has been saying that all the hotels are in great demand of workers for the busy season which is only a week away. Students will be on their holidays, and winter time is when all of the Southern Australians migrate North to get out of the cold weather.
We walked into some hotels and restaurants that we found online that said they were hiring. When we got there, they said the position was taken. I started to write down hotel names as we went so I could call them all and ask if they were hiring as well. The few places we found in the employment section of the paper said to call. Most of them said the position had been filled (even though we saw their ad in the paper from that morning). The rest had given us emails to send our resume to.
One of the ladies I had talked to, needed housekeepers to start right away. She had a home she rented out, so it was pretty steady work. She offered me the position right over the phone, but unfortunately, I would need a car to get to Daintree, which is about 30 minutes from PD. One job offer, still no job.
I had spoken to another company about housekeeping. They had wanted me to start right away, but like the last one, you needed a car to be able to go to several different properties, on top of having your own cleaning supplies, including a vacuum! Two job offers, still no job.
I received another phone call about a bartending job. I was super excited, and thought This is it!. She had wanted me to come in to start that evening, in only two hours! The bad part was that it was 20 minutes Southeast of PD. John and I were in town when we got the call, so we quickly walked the 20 minutes back to our resort and figured we would just ride bikes (we can rent them from where we are staying).
We were upset that it was so far out because then that means we would have to find a new place to stay, and be away from the beach, but, we would make the sacrifice if it meant I got a job, which was proving to be more difficult then expected. If we left on our bikes now, we would get there in an hour or so. We have ridden for longer before, so it was no biggie.
We started talking to the friendly lady at the receptionist desk. We asked her how to get to Jellaten, which was the city that the bar (The Highlander) was located. Turns out, it was on top of one of those giant mountains I mentioned earlier. She explained that the ride up in a car is pretty treacherous, let alone a bike. Not to mention, quite dangerous with all its twist and turns.
John and I both feel pretty defeated, but were determined to find a way up there. We called the lady and asked if I could come up tomorrow instead, so that we had some time to ask around for a ride. We posted a little ad on our community board at the resort hoping someone with a car could take us. Having sorted out the details, we walked back into town to finish our job hunt.
I had noticed that a lot of people from our resort who were waking up for work in the morning, had shirts on that said Forde Group. I had recognized the name from an ad in the paper, and it just so happens that we had walked by their office in town. Of course, we decided to stop in.
Turns out it was a recruiting agency. They employee mostly for the hospitality industry. Bartending, wait staff, housekeeping, and cooks.
Here in Australia, before you can work behind a bar, and in most cases, before you can even work in an establishment that serves alcohol, you have to have your RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) certificate. I had known this before I had even left Ohio, but figured I would worry about it, in the event I wanted to start working. Considering that most of my experience is in bartending, that is where I have been sending most of my applications. In order to register with Forde Group, you had to have your RSA, so we went home, I jumped online and spent the 45 minutes to get certified.
Its a pretty easy course, especially when you already know a fair amount about alcohol, BAC, alcohol servings and content, etc. The hard part is using the metric system as a means of measuring and mixing. I pasted the course easily though, and was just happy to have spent the money to get it done and out of the way.
Excited that we are at least receiving responses from all our applications, we went to bed excited to see what kind of calls we would get the next day.