Red Cliffs is located about 13km from the Regional City of Mildura. Mildura is the heart of the Sunraysia District, which encompasses Red Cliffs, Irymple, Merbein and many other smaller country centres.
Mildura is easily accessible by either of the major Australian buslines: Greyhound, or V-Line, and also has a busy regional airport which is serviced by QantasLink, Rex and Virgin Australia.
For more information on Mildura and Sunraysia, please visit these links:
The Sunraysia District is considered to be Victoria’s Food Bowl: growing and harvesting a wide variety of fresh produce for sale domestically and to be exported overseas.
To name just some of the produce grown locally, we have: table grapes, wine grapes, all citrus (oranges, mandarins, lemons, grapefruit, etc), avocados, melons, almonds, pistachios, apricots, asparagus, beans to name some of the more significant crops.
The diverse range of produce grown locally, results in a great deal of harvest work on offer at any given time of the year. The busiest harvest seasons would be the table Grape harvest period of January through to April, and the Citrus harvest period of June through to October. In between these two particularly busy periods there are still plenty of other jobs available, but they may not be as consistent, or of the same duration.
While there are obviously picking jobs to harvest the produce, there is also a wide variety of other jobs available:
- packing
- shed work
- stacking cartons
- making boxes
- tractor driving
- pruning
- vine training
- shoot thinning
- hand spraying
- marking out for planting
- irrigation work (fixing drip lines, etc)
to name a few.
There are plenty of websites/forums out there attacking the work on offer in Mildura and Sunraysia; and it is true that there will be jobs that won’t pay well for an inexperienced farm hand. However, there is also plenty of legitimate, well paying work on offer as well; it’s just a case of having someone who you can trust to advise you. A good tip is to do your own research, and secure accommodation and work through a registered Backpacker’s Hostel.