About the Study & Migration Diary
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From July 2020 to January 2021, we recorded eight editions of our Study & Migration Diary.
These stories capture not just the subject’s journey of studying abroad, migrating, or building a business — they are the hard-won reflections earned from navigating one difficult chapter after another.
Each person may have started out with a similar mindset, passing through very different scenery along the way, eventually reaching a waypoint that you or I might long for — and they are all still on the journey.
Season Two is Back
Episode One: Ah Dong’s Story
Five years ago he could not speak a word of English. In those five years he has worked in a grocery shop, a lamb processing plant, a chicken processing plant, and a tunnel construction project. Over those five years he has travelled to Port Hedland, Melbourne, Wagga Wagga, and Sydney…
Port Hedland, Western Australia
A grocery shop surrounded by red earth in a mining district
Hi everyone, I’m Ah Dong. I came to Australia in 2017 on a working holiday visa. I’ve worked in a grocery shop, on a farm, and in a meat processing plant — and now I’m a tunnel construction worker in Sydney.
Back home I was also in engineering — working on a government project in Taiwan, handling the plumbing and electrical wiring. I had originally planned to go to Macau, so I applied for jobs there, but nothing came through. Macau employers generally require English first and Cantonese second — I had neither — so I was unlikely to be selected. That’s how Australia came about.
I came to Australia because I happened to see a notice through an agent advertising meat factory jobs. I didn’t apply to just one place — I also applied to a grocery shop — and the grocery shop selected me. The agent handled the flights, tickets, accommodation and so on. There was an initial agency fee, then they arranged the visa and everything else, and after a medical check I was on my way to Australia.
The first stop was Perth (Western Australia), then a connecting flight from Perth to another location — Port Hedland. The shop owner’s wife picked us up at the airport and we started work straight away. We’d agreed on about $100 AUD cash per day as take-home pay. We lived in a caravan — the kind you tow behind a car — and there wasn’t much around at all. We called it the mine site. The shop was the only one on the entire mine site, surrounded by red earth on all sides. We sold breakfast items like hot dogs, hash browns, fried food, drinks, and snacks.
The Lamb Plant and Chicken Plant
Day after day on the production line
We worked there for about a week — just long enough to cover the airfare — then flew to Melbourne, because I’d found a better job online at a lamb processing plant. After working at the lamb plant, my housemate at the time introduced me to a job at a chicken plant.
The chicken plant was at Baiada, near Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. I took the train out to Wagga Wagga to start the new job. Part of the reason I went was that on a working holiday you can qualify for a second or even third visa extension — I went to the chicken plant specifically to meet the regional work requirement for a second-year extension.
I was on the chicken wing section. Each wing came along and I’d cut it into three pieces, repeating that same motion over and over, packing them into boxes to be sent off. It was piece-rate work — my average weekly earnings were around $1,300-$1,400 AUD. I worked at that chicken plant for almost a year.
“You Need to Go and Learn —
Or You’ll Always Be a Labourer”
I then got in touch with a senior friend of a friend who had a house in Granville, Sydney. There happened to be a spare room — a double bed, about $100 AUD a week. This person had seen a tunnel job posted in a Line group. It was for the driverless metro tunnels — several stations, including Cherrybook, Epping, and Bella Vista — and we worked on all of them. You didn’t need much experience. The work wasn’t that hard: mixing concrete, laying panels, letting them set — essentially manual labour.
During this time I got to know Gary. We started on the same day. He had grown up in Australia so he had English skills and took us under his wing — at peak times there were over seventy people working in that tunnel. The pay wasn’t as high at that point. Gary, as supervisor, would say: “You know your English isn’t good — if you want to stay in Australia and earn more money, you have to go and learn it. Otherwise you’ll always just be a labourer.”
Both Satisfaction and Pay on the Rise
As long as you’re willing to learn
Those words really stayed with me. At first I had quite a temper — but I started swallowing my pride and learning from the more experienced tradespeople. The thing about skills is that they belong to you — no one can take them away. The more you absorb — techniques, ideas, approaches — the more you can bring to the job when you’re working on your own. I came to realise that everything I was putting out was what I had learned earlier, and when you produce something like that, you feel a real sense of achievement. My hourly rate started at about $25, and now it’s around $35 or so — it depends on your own effort, just climbing steadily upward.
The World Is Big — Go and See It
A cliché, perhaps, but that’s exactly how it is
When I first arrived in Australia in 2017, the first year or two everything felt so fresh and new. I really felt that the world is beautiful — but only once you step out into it. If you stay in the same place, you just go in circles. To give an example: if I’d stayed in Taiwan it would have been fine, but the moment you take that step you realise how beautiful the world outside can be. The people, the places, everything is different. My thinking changed, my outlook changed — my values and sense of the world shifted considerably. These days when I have time off I go skiing, camping, occasionally surfing — out with friends like that.
Honestly, I’m genuinely into it — that’s the thing about interests. You need to find what you enjoy, or you’ll feel like life in Australia is boring and won’t want to stay very long. Go and do what you love. It’s the same with work: find work you enjoy and you’ll just keep going.
You Simply Want To
And you take the step
Was the first step hard for Ah Dong? Quite hard — no English, no higher education, and not much experience of leaving home. But it wasn’t that hard either. He says it was simply the jolt of encountering different cultures and values that sparked a desire to see the world — a wish to take that step. Just wanting to go and see. That’s all it was.
Was every step after that hard for Ah Dong? Quite hard — he knew no one and nothing in a brand-new place. But it wasn’t that hard either. You meet someone, hear a piece of advice, an opportunity comes along, and you think: I’ll give it a go. Hoping for something better than where you are now. Just wanting to take one more step forward. That’s all.
Is Ah Dong’s next step hard? Quite hard — when it comes to staying, no one can easily say it’s simple and straightforward. But it isn’t that hard either. Whether he stays in Australia or returns to Taiwan, every step already taken means things can only get better.
Right back at the start of this journey, it was simply wanting to — and actually taking that step.
