Young European Backpackers Are Being Lured to Australia for Mining Jobs
Social media has become an unlikely conduit to the remote mineral and metal mines in the country’s deserts.
Photo illustration: Ryan Haskins; photos: Getty Images
Janne D’Huyvetter’s TikTok account used to look like those of a lot of other travel influencers: full of dreamy sunsets and surf breaks, coffee shop reviews and tips for backpacking abroad. To replenish her funds in 2023, the 30-year-old Belgian got a work visa in Australia and picked up a job cleaning dorms and kitchens in an isolated mining camp in one of the country’s deserts. Her content took a surprising turn.
“Day in the life: FIFO Housekeeper,” she wrote in one of her first posts about her fly-in, fly-out job, where workers are flown to remote sites, often for weeks at a time. In an 18-second video from January 2024, D’Huyvetter showed snippets of her day: putting on a bright yellow uniform with fluorescent banding, pushing a cleaning trolley and eating in the company commissary. The video drew almost 950,000 views, far more than any of her previous creations, prompting her to post regularly about her life at the mine ever since. She’s now one of TikTok’s leading FIFO influencers, offering advice to her 83,000 followers about how to follow in her footsteps. (In a nutshell: Get a visa, book a flight to Perth, polish your résumé and apply.)