Well, firstly, $67k id VERY low for a 2:2 roster in any mine. The only people i know who would be on that are bar staff and things.

You can just about live on it, but it will be tight. The quality of the property you can afford is not going to be great or will be in an iffy area.

We arrived in Sydney almost 4 years ago on $75k and just me and the wife with no children and while we did "ok" we did subsidise our living costs with savings.

As for FIFO. Some people get on with it and some dont. Its impossible to say until you do it. For me i love it. The 2:2 is though probably the best roster there is. Although many rosters are less time away, this gives a good period home.

As I said before, the 2:2 roster is not all the time, only on the work they recently won.

Don't really want to drop company names, but my trade is a Materials Technician, the work is geotechnical site investigation.

I don't know what areas of Gold Coast are 'iffy' but have looked along the $400 a week rental houses in and around Pacific Pines, Helensvale, Arundel. That is for a house with three bedrooms, not sure how much more I would like to pay as I don't really need a huge house with many rooms.

Everything I have looked at seems to be in 'complexes', why is that? Is that just the norm over there?



I have checked out some utility bills, phone, electric, water, they don't seem to be alot, unless I am not looking at them correctly. The biggest expense seems to be a car, furniture and food.

Dont kwo the GC at all. But i would say that $67k you can survive, but you certainly wont be well off. As to how well the pay is, will depend on how much you are on site, but normally if you are not mainly on site most companies do not give a formal roster. Most people who are on site only every so often are normally just given their weekends back as time in luie. So that fact you have been given a roster would indicate to me that you are going to be mainly site based.

Apologies in advance for this. . .

Notwithstanding that I don't know the OPs experience/expertise/seniority levels and type of business, I believe that for a FIFO site job (probably engineering related), AUD 67,000 sounds very low; suggest should add AUD 100,000 to that to be more viable.

Apologies again.

Actualy, from what i gather from his job title, it is a fairly junior role and so it is probably only about $10-20k off the mark given he has no mining experience. People assume that everyone in mining is raking it in. Reality is that most are on a LOT less that $100k. We pay truckies - entry point for most people, $82k, Underground drill offsiders $75k, nipper about the same

I agree.

Our FIFO mine site workers in FNQ were 2 on 1 off roster and most were on $65k. 12 hour working days. Only the more skilled electricians, mechanics and one or two others earnt more.

Was it the baby bit?