The Australian Working Holiday Visa allows young people aged 18 to 30 to work and travel in Australia for up to three years, extending the visa year by year by completing a period of regional work known as the “88 days”.
In November 2025 we decided to head to Australia on a Working Holiday Visa — a visa designed for young people who want to travel and work at the same time. It lets you live in Australia for up to a year, with the option to extend by meeting certain regional work requirements.
We arrived in Sydney without really knowing what to expect. We took on all kinds of jobs: fine dining, cafés — very much part of Australia’s beloved coffee culture. Before long, Stefania had landed a role as an Italian and Spanish teacher at a language school, while Davide became a football coach for kids.
In parallel, we both worked with Sunlark Watersports, a company running guided tours at Narrabeen on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Our days were shaped by beach volleyball, surfing and the wonderfully unhurried pace of life up on the Northern Beaches.
After a few months we decided to give up our flat in Dee Why and buy a van. That’s how our van life chapter began — a choice that completely changed the way we experienced Australia, giving us a freedom and closeness to nature that a flat simply can’t offer.
With some friends who were also living on the road, we set off on our first road trip down to Melbourne, timing it perfectly to catch the Australian Open. On the way down we hugged the east coast; on the way back we took a different route through the outback and past Canberra, Australia’s capital.
One of the greatest joys of travelling by van was the people we stumbled across. One afternoon a woman pulled over next to us and, after a brief chat, invited us home for dinner. That evening we played cricket with her kids in the garden and cooked carbonara for the whole family. One of those beautifully simple moments you never forget.
After the Melbourne road trip we spent another month in the van around Sydney before pushing north into Queensland to start working towards the 88 days of regional work needed to extend the Working Holiday Visa.
That meant another road trip, this time all the way to Port Douglas in far north Queensland, where we began working as guides in the oldest rainforest on earth.