Concrete Mixer/tipper Driver

[MelandJas]

I recently went to the London Expo and was told that my job is in demand but is not on the skills list.

i am self employed looking for employment in Australia

Does any one have any ideas of what to do next

[Guest lynneflinn]

I recently went to the London Expo and was told that my job is in demand but is not on the skills list.

i am self employed looking for employment in Australia

Does any one have any ideas of what to do next

Hi Guys

 

just read your thread and you said your jobs not on the skills shortage list but it is in demand. Well!!! we to are in the same boat coz OH is a fuel tanker driver but theres a big debate about putting truckies on the list. To cut a long story short I heard of a guy called Darrell Todd from Thinking Australia and he has ben working on getting drivers in to WA. Apparently its took him 2 years to set this up and he is the only one. I dont know if he could help you but its certainly worth a try-he is a fab bloke(a bit of a nutter!!!) but in a nice way. Heres his e-mail anyway Work in Australia, migrate to Australia

 

keep me posted

Lynne Anton & Molly

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Jason

 

I was talking with Mel the other night abut this in Chat.

 

We already know that because your skill is not on the list, you would need to aim for a subclass 457 visa. You are more likely to succeed in that aim if the employer is in a "regional or low growth metropolitan area of Australia." After 2 years on a 457 in a regional area, you would need to try to persuade the boss to sponsor you for a PR visa. This would probably be an RSMS (Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme) visa because yours is not a recognised skill.

 

What you can be sure of is that the pay is likely to be lousy, at least for the first couple of years - and I do mean lousy - because with the sort of visa you would need in order to get round the skills angle, the employer would almost certainly be able to take advantage of the Regional Employer Concession - via which he gets to pay you not less than $37,665 per year before tax. Divide that by 2 and you have roughly £18,000 a year before tax. Tax is 20% and there may be other deductions as well.

 

In order not to have a major and miserable struggle to make ends meet, Mel would certainly need a part time job and a full time job would be better if possible, but Mel would be able to do whatever she likes by way of a job, whereas you would have to do the one you have been sponsored for.

 

For the minute, do not get hung up on the visas, I suggest. Once you find the employer/sponsor, a Registered Migration Agent can be instructed to sort the visa side of things out both for you and for your employer.

 

At the minute the challenge is to find the employer! How do you set about that?

 

I completely agree with lynnflinn that a chat with Darrell Todd of Thinking Australia would be very well worthwhile at this stage. Darrell is very well-connected in Oz and he has a talent for ferretting out the unusual and making it happen, by all accounts. Equally, though, do not become mesmerised. He might be able to find an employer who is able and willing to sponsor you, but no more than that. You certainly cannot afford to leave the entire task to him.

 

You will need to do a helluva lot of searching on the Internet yourselves, and you might well send over 1,000 e-mails to companies all over Oz, 99.9% of which will be ignored. Which is very disheartening, but at the end of the day you are looking for a needle in a haystack and they do exist if you are determined enough about finding teh one that you need.

 

I reckon that the thing to do is to break this down State by State, because the one guy that you need could be anywhere in Oz.

 

I would use a main folder for each State in My Favourites and then sub-folders for different types of companies and for migration-come-recruitment agencies in the relevant sectors. Ditto with your e-mail account.

 

Let us start with South Australia, because the whole of SA is "regional." Plus it is the state which is said to be the most desperate for foreign workers at the moment (though I don't know how true this is.)

 

I would do this on two levels, if you like.

 

First the "big picture." Mr Keily tells me that mines need thousands of tons of concrete. He mentioned that with underground mines, the tunnels or whatever they are are all lined with concrete. Doubtless stacks of concrete is needed for other types of mining as well. The mines are simply screaming for workers and apparently the new Government is working out various ischemes to try to help to make it easier to get foreign workers out to the mines.

 

Use Google Australia to do the searching. Tell Google UK to find Google Australia and tell Google Australia to confine itself to Australian web-pages. When I had a go at this for you earlier, I told Google Australia to look got Mining + SA. Let us find out what is mined in SA and where it is mined.

 

It transpires that the largest uranium deposits in the world are in two or three areas of SA. Apparently the main thing they dig out is copper ore, but there is gold, copper and uranium all in the same seams of ore. OK - a quick scootle around tells us a bit about where the various mines and to-be-mined areas are.

 

Next thing: South Australia Chamber of Mining and Energy Rescources:

 

About SACOME: South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy: industry association for resources and mining companies industry in SA.

 

Click on the Members list and also on the list for service industry members. At least one company dealing with pouring concrete is on that list. I just picked it out because concrete is mentioned in its name. There are bound to be others besides. There is also a Migration Agency called Migration Solutions based in Adelaide (on the service industry members list.) From their website, they are aiming to market themselves as the RMAs whom companies needing foreign staff for the mining sector most need to talk to. Pick their brains, I suggest (but don't pay for the privilege of doing so because without a prospective employer you have no need of their visa services.)

 

I also came across a booklet on one of the sponsored links. The booklet is probably a complete waste of money and I doubt that the payment link it uses is secure unless it is something like Paypal.

 

However, the burble promoting the booklet reveals that there is a special training course for those who wish to drive dumper trucks in the mines in Australia. This is not surprising. I saw one of these trucks in a recent documentary on telly. The wheels were taller than the driver and he did not have to bend down in order to walk underneath this machine in order to look up into the engine to check for oil leaks etc, plus at least one of the camera crew (and maybe a sound man as well) were underneath this machine with the driver. It was IMMENSE. Apparently the thing is heavier than a fully-laden 747 jumbo jet, so I'm not surprised that one needs a special course in order to learn to control such a beast. For all I know, the concrete trucks are also nothing like the ones I see going round Southampton with the cylinder thing going round on the back. The picture of the concrete pouring truck looked as if that was a massive contraption as well. So - you may need a special licence. Google Australia the question and you should be able to find out about these courses.

 

Obviously there is also the stuff which I expect to see round Southampton. I think what we call yellow pages is called White Pages in Oz but use Google Australia and you can soon track the directory down. Google Maps (again via Google Australia) is dead handy for sussing out the names of the major towns and it is obvious which ones are the major towns because of the types of roads involved. The directory must list all the companies in the town who can produce the man with the concrete mixer truck if I want a house built, for example.

 

What I know about the concrete industry can be written on the back of a stamp. You obviously know far more than I ever will about when, where, why and how concrete is used, so you can do this type of searching FAR more effectively than I can.

 

Also, don't forget about ports. No use extracting all sorts of minerals out of the Australian landscape if it cannot be shipped away to wherever it goes. These days the giant ships lie on jetties which are anything up to 2 miles long and you can't do anything around a port without millions of tons of concrete! Commercial ports are always divided up. Container traffic is never on the same berths as passenger terminals and ships. The bulk carriers for the ores will be somewhere else - anything up to 5 or 10 miles from the bits that a cruise passenger might see. The more mines they open, the more ships they need, ergo the bigger the ports they will have to build for them etc. They seem to buld special railways from the mines to the ports.

 

Apparently there is a place called Mt Gee in SA, up in the Flinders ranges. I think this must be the site of the major new uranium mine which seems to be hot news in SA, and this is to be called the Honeymoon Mine. There is a row going on at the minute because the company involved dumped waste everywhere from the test drilling, having promised not to. All their activities have been stopped until they have cleaned the mess up apparently. The mine is not expected to go into production till the early part of the next decade - not surprisingly because they have not built it yet! Ergo they don't need the concrete just yet either, but they undoubtedly will need it in the near future.

 

Mr K also mentioned, by the way, that the majority of mine workers are expected to live close to the mines. There is no time to build proper towns nearby - they are carting pre-fab bungalows in on low loaders. However, the pay is so attratcive that who cares in your first few years out in Oz? If that ifestyle really isn't for you, then you would have to look at much smaller enterprises with much less need for, and possibly much less willingness to get involved with recruiting, foreign workers who need visas.

 

Recipe: Chuck whatever else you can think of into the pot and repeat 5 more times because there are 6 States and Territories in Oz!

 

Good luck and never forget that your "Poms in Oz family" will support you every step of the way. We'll cheer when the news is good and we'll cheer you up and prevent you from giving up when you become disillusioned and disheartened, which will be inevitable at times. Other Members have DONE the unlikely and seemingly impossible. So can you, Jason!

 

Hugz

 

Gill

xx