In a couple of weeks' time my modest family of three will be spread across 4000-plus kilometres and two continents, all in the cause of finding work. While my adult daughter has been living and working in a country town an eight-hour drive away from home since late last year, my spouse flies in and out to work in one of Western Australia's many mines.
I am the last to hit the road and will venture the furthest, to a different country altogether in Southeast Asia. For a while there I was the base station, holding the fort while the other two transitioned in and out, exhausted in turn from the long drive home or 14 days of non-stop 12-hour shifts. If you had asked us two years ago, not one of us would have wanted to work that far from home or apart from each other.
Meanwhile, the 18 year old lad next door has been looking for his first job since graduating from high school 18 months ago. Untrained yet willing, his parents fret he may decline into a slump. To our left, two houses away, a young woman works out of her rented villa giving art lessons to primary school children. A migrant from China, her hours are long and erratic, and weekends, as far as I can see, are almost entirely taken up with work.
In between our two homes dwells the only family where the traditional mode still survives — a single breadwinner in a regular nine-to-five job supporting the entire family of six. Earning a crust seems to have become much tougher and more complex for all of us. Was it always this complicated or have we all been lulled into expecting steady and stable work?
When news of my impending move broke within the extended family, one sister messaged: 'I admire your family ... ' Reading between the lines I asked, 'Because we are all over the place?' 'For a living ... ya,' she explained. Her question made me pause and consider again what I am trying to achieve in the move.
I would be lying if I said there were no jobs available in Perth that I could put my mind to. There have been offers, contracts and part-time gigs that together would have enabled me to make a living. None, it must be said, were for permanent, ongoing work — a day a week for two