My backpacker jobs during my Working Holiday Visa in New Zealand

Kiwifruit packing

Another (im)popular job for backpackers is working in factories, especially packing sheds. I’m probably going to surprise you with this but… it’s not that bad. After my 6 months in the blueberries, still being on the SSE visa, I decided to work in a kiwifruit factory.

At the packhouse, I was part of the “tray assembly” group, which means that I put a plastic bag in a cardboard box, before sending it on a conveyor belt to the packers. I did this in a loop, for 9 hours, 6 days a week, for 2 months.

Pros

When you put it that way, I admit that this job doesn’t sound very appealing. But the good thing is that most of the people in the hostel worked in the same packhouse, so there was a nice atmosphere. This job allowed me to bond and have fun with some friends. You should try rock-paper-scissors, on both sides of a conveyor belt, it’s great.

In addition to that, the tray assembly position is pretty cool because it’s a position that requires a little more organization, in which we can help each other, and that requires a little more movement. We are not static waiting for kiwis to fall into our box. Sometimes, some lines get faster, much faster, and that little adrenaline rush that comes along is actually pretty fun.

Cons

If you start a packhouse job, you might not see the sun again. Goodbye sweet rays of sunshine. Since the work days were long and it was winter, I rarely saw daylight. So it’s not ideal if, like me, your mood is very sensitive to it. Fortunately, the atmosphere and the sunrises on arrival were there to compensate.

The work is also very, very repetitive so time passes by very slowly. But, as said above, there is always rock-paper-scissors.

Bottom line: tested, semi-approved.