About Us

Workstay began life in 1986 as a small 12 bed hostel in Perth catering exclusively for Working Holiday Makers. At that time the term ‘backpacker’ had not yet been coined nor heard of. Backpacker hostels in the west were then called Youth Hostels and backpackers themselves called Youth Hostellers. They were the days when to stay at a Youth Hostel you ‘had’ to become a YHA member and agree to abide by strict rules which included doing a ‘chore’ each day you stayed at a YHA hostel. Managers were called Wardens and among their duties was the ritualistic “curfew”. This meant after completing your morning chore it was time to be ‘kicked-out’ for the rest of the day. The hostel was locked up. No office, no reception, no after hours service to let you back in to pick up whatever you may have forgotten (medication, money, passport ….) It wasn’t uncommon for travelers to roll up just before curfew having traveled for days without a break , checking-in their stuff, then being ordered  back out onto the street. Even the sick weren’t immune. You needed to be able to pass the wardens sick assessment which ultimately meant being in his or hers good books and obviously close to death. From memory kick-out time was 10:00am and  back-in time was 5.30pm. At night everyone was meant to be in their beds by midnight and some hostels even locked their doors. It was known for a sleeping dorm to be awoken in the middle of the night by a frothing at the mouth, enraged and wild eyed warden turning on the light and banging a dirty saucepan demanding to know who hadn’t washed up their dishes. There were no T.V’s, very strict office hours, no alcohol, no sleeping bags and if you broke the rules your membership would be summarily revoked, effectively black-banning you from all YHA hostels. Workstay in effect was the beginning of the now ubiquitous backpacker hostel in Western Australia, and indeed way ahead of its time as the working holiday maker scheme was still in its infancy. In 1986 only a handful of countries had signed up to the program and very few visa’s were in fact being issued, especially when you think that this year, 2009, up to 180,000 working holiday visa’s will be issued for Australia alone and over 20 countries are taking part in the program and more are queuing up. Workstays little hostel in 1986 was in fact the first of its kind anywhere in the world. Not only did Workstay provide a specialist style of accommodation for working holiday travellers but also actively promoted these new “working holiday makers” to a suspicious audience of prospective employers who at that time saw them mostly as “dodgy” young foreigners. Some employers today still see them this way and of course some employers have been let down and had a bad experience at the hands of some ‘dodgy young foreigners’. Also, in situations where employers didn’t do the “right thing” by their working holiday recruit’s, Workstay was able to step in and many times rectify the situation. This sometimes meant getting money owed or making sure that employers paid fairly and provided reasonable conditions. Workstay continues to act like a “Union” for working holiday backpackers and over the years has helped sort out all kinds of issues. Workstay has continued to promote working holiday makers in Western Australia and now Australia continuously since 1986 and to build on innovations which it has introduced, many of which have been adopted throughout Australia. However, Workstays backers have over the years seen the growth of copy-cat agencies diluting their ability to effectively ensure new innovations have kept up with this massively expanded sector of the backpacker industry. Workstays backers today though, 2009, believe the time is again right for a new phase of development to begin, and as the copy-cats don’t have the ability to bring them its up to Workstay to once again  move the scheme forward. Watch this space.

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