[Kluny]

Where do you get these tomato picking jobs? Seriously, though. I'm moving to Oz in three months and I've been craigslisting and gumtree'ing like crazy, but I have not had any replies. Can you give me the name of some farms to call about harvesting jobs?

[filopodium]

The first thing with these kind of fruit picking jobs is they are pretty seasonal and differ quite a bit from state to state.

I spent 9 months in OZ, most of the time in northern Queensland working at a lime/lychee farm and some time at a banana farm. Since you are not in OZ yet, I doubt you will have any luck with gumtree/craigslist. Even if you are there it's pretty hard to get the job that way - the farmers really like to make sure you WANT to work and can physically do the work (at least I didn't manage to find work via gumtree).

The thing you have to do is go to the farms directly and talk to the owners/recruiters face-to-face. We bought a cheap 2500$ car between 3 people from Sydney and started driving north along the coast. There's quite a bit of work in the tropical areas during the summer months - bananas, mangoes, limes, lychees, avocados in late summer etc.

So my advice would be - get a cheap car, travel and work at the same time! (some farms hire only for the harvest period which for some produce isn't very long!)

Hope this helps a bit

[jacalata]

Go to a hostel in Bundaberg, look at the wall. Or call a hostel in Bundaberg and ask them now. I don't think anyone offering fruit picking jobs cares about 'a guy who's going to move to australia in three months' enough to ever reply to an email though. The only people who would reply to that are the ones who will charge you money for it, there are too many kids wandering in each day looking for work on the spot to talk to someone on the other side of the world who probably is just daydreaming and won't ever turn up anyway.

[rdouble]

If you are in the Melbourne/Geelong area try Bellarine Hydroponics.