How We Won a $10,000 Trip Across Australia!

Hello! Or G'Day Mate!

We would like to send a HUGE thank you to TNT Down Under Magazine, OZ Experience, and to everyone who watched our video on YouTube! If you haven't seen it quite yet, what are you waiting for?? Check it out at:

OZ Experience TNT Down Under WINNING VIDEO!

And if you're still hungry for more awesome CazzMatt videos check out our incredible YouTube page to see some of the funny videos we made on our travels, like swimming with seals, ZORBing, and feeding birds out of my mouth, which grossed out my mom.

So after watching our winning video you’ll obviously see sex sells and by that I mean a fat guy running around in his underwear.

First things first, let us introduce ourselves. We’re are the dynamic duo Cassie and Matt aka CazzMatt! We both hail from the San Francisco Bay Area, we recently finished University, then took off to farm in Hawaii , from there we joined 2 good friends from the farm and backpacked all over New Zealand, and now we're working and living in fabulous Sydney.

We can't wait to get started on our AWESOME adventure all over Australia!! Basically we get what's called the Fair Dinkum Pass, which allows us to travel all over Australia for up to 6 months.

We'll start by departing from Sydney, which has been our beloved home for the past 6 months, but more importantly we're getting away from our LAME roommates! Shortly after leaving Sydney we'll arrive on the West Coast of Australia in Perth where we embark on a 10-day journey heading North to Broome, all thanks to Western Xposure. Naturally we'll be doing cool stuff all along the way like hiking through national parks, feeding dolphins in Monkey Mia, and swimming with whale sharks. Then we'll make the leap to Darwin where we'll wrestle crocodiles and swim with them in the Cage of Death! How awesome does that sound?! A CAGE OF DEATH! Crocodile Dundee would be so proud.

Then we hop on a flight to Cairns, maybe spend a few weeks there, sail the Whitsundays through the eco certified Explore Whitsundays, snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, and not pull a "Shen Neng" and run a ground on a precious coral reef.

From there our details are a little uncertain. We have the choice to take as long as we want down the East Coast, so we might take our time, maybe work, and then finish traversing down to our beloved Sydney again. We keep heading south to Melbourne, then make the swim to Tasmania, and back up to Adelaide. Lastly, we shoot up the center of OZ, while taking in the sights at Uluru (The giant red rock) and finish back in Darwin, for more CAGE OF DEATH!!

This is going to be the trip of a lifetime and we're looking forward to bringing everyone along for the ride, please make sure to subscribe to our blog and watch our ground breaking videos of our crazy adventures.

Cheers,

CazzMatt

How to Find a Job in Sydney and not have it SUCK!

Now that we had a phone number and address to slap on our resumes, we set out to find work. Job hunting probably sucks even more than apartment hunting. Be ready to hear “No” a lot. While Gumtree is helpful, it’s best to just hit the streets, show up in person, and don’t give up. One roadblock we hit was backpacker discrimination. Many employers assumed all backpackers looking for a job would end up moving on in a couple weeks, and leave them high and dry with the same position to fill yet again. It’s important to set yourself apart from this stereotype by telling potential employers that your plan is to stay in Sydney a long time, duh. Also, chain stores like Cotton On or Gloria Jean’s, are less likely to hire backpackers, so look for privately-owned restaurants or stores. Another great thing with family owned business is they’re more willing to pay “under the table”, which eliminates high tax rates. Matt interviewed at a Cotton On clothing store for a managerial position but after a group-interview was notified that they weren’t interested, which is for the best, because it would suck to work there!! Not that he’s still bitter about it or anything.

Matt found a job at a nightclub in Darling Harbour as a “glassier” or “bus boy”. IT SUCKED! It sucked so hard. Working till 3am, getting home at 4am is not a normal life, unless you’re a vampire. Then it’s very normal. Thank god Cassie found a good waitress job at a respectable restaurant, and they just happened to be looking for another person, so they gave Matt a shot and it all worked out! A common practice for employers is to give potential employees a test run. Which means they call you in and you work for 1 day, sometimes at your own expense (i.e. no pay). As long as you don’t set the place on fire, it’ll work out and they’ll hire you. So that’s what happened, and Cassie and I were fortunate enough to work together at the world-famous, 1^st class, gourmet restaurant: The Hyde Park Barracks Café! Another great part of working at a restaurant is, if your boss is as awesome as ours was at Hyde Park Barracks Café, they’ll feed you after your shift, and our restaurant was a great place to eat.

If you plan to work in the food service industry, like as a waiter, bar tender, etc. You must have a RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol). It’s a one day class where you sit in a classroom and listen to an old retired bar tender lecture you on all the crazy drinking laws in New South Wales that everyone seems to ignore anyways. It’s more like a punishment, like Traffic School. But it’s easy, and afterwards you can legally work in a food or drink service establishment. We took our RSA in Bondi; it was the cheapest, like $60 or so. Also, to work in Australia you obviously need a Working Holiday Visa and a Tax File Number (TFN). The Visa you can and should apply way before you even get to OZ, but the TFN you can only get when you’re here and have a permanent address.

It’s important to dress the part. The standard uniform for working in most restaurants and bars is a black t-shirt or button up, so if you plan on being a waiter, it’s a wise investment to buy a black shirt. Cheap options are available at K-Mart or Paddy’s Market. If you can, choose the latter of the two. Paddy’s is a cheap, dirty underworld in China Town; it’s awesome! It’s literally underneath a real mall and it’s packed to the rafters with knock-offs, discounted tourist crap, and food that I wouldn’t really trust. Hopefully you’re familiar with the Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes 1993 summer blockbuster, Demolition Man. In the movie there exists a dirty, noisy underworld buried away from the daylight where filthy under-dwellers eat rat burgers. That’s what Paddy’s is like. It’s a must see and there are some great bargains to be had, at Paddy’s that is. Demolition Man is good too.

Working visas differ for different countries. As Americans we can only work at one place for 6 months and 1 year total in Australia. European residents have the option of picking fruit for 3 months to re-new their working visas allowing them to stay much longer. Also, don’t come here and assume a University degree will automatically land you a job. We both have B.A.s from San Francisco State, but we’re waiters, obviously college was a giant waste of time!

So when it’s your turn to start looking for work in a wild hurry in Sydney, remember our tips:

o      Have a personal phone number for prospective employers to reach you at.

o      Grab a black shirt, and wear it when dropping off resumes and at your interview, too.

o      Get your RSA certificate and TFN number early.

o      Don’t rely on only the Internet to get a lead on a job. It can help, but it’s not the end all be all.

It’s best to show up in person, shake hands, and hopefully find a job that doesn’t totally suck.