Southern experience good for new immigrants
February 23rd, 2008, 5:20 am Hobbies News
But he happened upon a careers expo in Scotland and ended up talking to Sue Morrison-Bailey, from Venture Southland, who planted the idea of working in Southland.
She took his contact details and a week later Mr Bailey, who had worked as a transport director, was called by Gordon McDowall of McDowall Freight Ltd.
Mr McDowall was in the United Kingdom recruiting truck drivers for his nationwide transport business. Southland, in particular, is facing a critical shortage of truck drivers, according to Venture Southland.
Not long after his interview, in May last year, Mr McDowall called Mr Bailey with a job starting in nine days %26mdash; a job he was told would be described to him when he arrived.
Mr Bailey didnt hesitate and hopped on a plane.
He said the first night in Winton he had mixed emotions about what hed got himself into but since then he has never looked back. He %26quot;absolutely loves%26quot; his job and plans to make Southland his home for good.
%26quot;Im in a job called operations support. Im a freight analyst. I deal with depots all around the country, problem solving.%26quot; He is on a two-year work to residence visa and has bought a house in Winton, a short drive to his work in Browns.
%26quot;I went back to England for two weeks at Christmas and I wanted to come home. I felt like a fish out of water.%26quot; He says the working environment, surroundings and recreational culture are so much better than where he is from, which is a heavily built-up industrial area with houses like those on Coronation Street.
The hardest part of moving here has been meeting new people outside of his workplace, he admits. Also adjusting to a colder house without central heating is a struggle, although he is getting heating installed.
Mr Bailey feels his move here has been completed by being joined by his son, daughter-in-law and their four children from England.
They arrived less than a month ago and his son is also taking up a position at McDowall Freight, as a truck driver.
Natalia Benquet, from Uruguay, said she first fell in love with New Zealand when she studied at Massey for a Masters in Applied Science in Animal production.
She returned to Uruguay in 2005 and was working on a Kiwi conversion dairy farm, and her husband worked at a farm 700km away, making it difficult to see each other.
They were both committed to coming to New Zealand to work and moved to Southland in September 2006.
Ms Benquet, 35, who was originally a vet in Uruguay, now works as an animal health specialist for MilkPride, a company which owns five dairy farms with 3800 cows. Her husband Alexis also works for MilkPride as an assistant manager.
%26quot;I analyse the data of all the cows and calves. I observe routines and systems and recommend changes.%26quot; She says she and her husband find Southland a great place to live, not only job-wise but the general feeling of safety, peace and quiet, and mutual respect.
%26quot;Its lovely to come here. The houses are tidy and organised and the gardens are very beautiful.%26quot; Ms Benquet enjoys things taken for granted here, such as being able to buy a car for under $1000 and the way one can live cheaply with good second-hand items, as well as the outdoor recreation opportunities in Southland.
About half of the MilkPrides workforce of 30 come from overseas, with 10 from Uruguay, and also workers from Romania, Bulgaria, Uganda, Australia, Holland and the United States, she says.
The work is hard and during calving they work at least 12 to 13 hours a day. She says many who come here are surprised by the number of hours and the intensity of the job and they do try to warn people of what to expect.
In Uruguay, which is also facing a dairying boom, workers might do long hours in dairying but it is at a more relaxed pace and workers tend to specialise, such as only milking or only mending fences or bringing in stock, rather than doing everything.
%26quot;There you are not running around like a headless chicken.%26quot; Ms Benquet is positive about the working style and believes it has made her more efficient.
However, in the long term, New Zealands dairy farmers will have to start considering measures and management tools to allow their staff to have more of a %26quot;normal%26quot; life, she says.
Uruguay and New Zealand have many similarities but the job opportunities are much better here and the economy is more stable.
Although Ms Benquet misses family she has made a decision not to be too homesick in her new home. %26quot;I think Southland has got heaps of opportunities. I think within the next 10 years it will become the next Dunedin in terms of size, even just looking at the number of conversions going ahead.%26quot;
2006 Census figures show:
SOUTHLAND DISTRICT
486 newcomers were in Southland on the day of the Census, making up 2 percent of the districts population of 28,440. Five percent were longer term migrants who had been living in New Zealand for three years or longer. The largest proportion of newcomers were born in England (19 percent) and Australia (12 percent). Another 10 percent are born in Scotland, 8 percent in the Netherlands, 7 percent in South Africa and 6 percent born in the Philippines. A third of newcomers to Southland District speak English and another language, 56 percent speak English only and 2 percent do not speak English at all.
INVERCARGILL CITY
708 newcomers were in Invercargill on the day of the census, making up 1 percent of the city population of 50,328. Six percent are longer term migrants. The largest proportion of newcomers were born in England (22 percent) and Australia (20 percent). Ninety-one percent of newcomers in the workforce are employed and 9 percent are unemployed. The ethnic groups with the largest proportions (50 percent) of unemployed were Zimbabwean, Samoan, Japanese and South African.
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