Friendship and adventures aren’t often the stories associated with Australia’s seasonal worker program, but a photographic exhibition has captured just that. 

Seasonal farm workers using disposable cameras have photographed some of their everyday life: picking fruit on farms, camaraderie and unique experiences.

“We’ve been handing out cameras across the state,” explained Kaya Barry, a cultural geographer from Griffith University behind the project.

“They take a bunch of photos and then post them back to me and we get them developed.” 

Lino Uhi from Tonga was one of hundreds of people who participated in a project shining a light on the seasonal workers who keep Australian farms ticking over.

He’s lived and worked in Australia on eight separate occasions.

Each time he has stayed and worked for nine months, and each time on the same farm in regional Queensland.

Every return trip has been driven by the same desire, to support his family back home.

“We pay for my sister, for the kids, for the school and for building [a] house,” Lino Uhi said.

The project aimed to get a sense of what life is like for seasonal workers on Australian farms, through their eyes.

Dr Barry said seasonal workers were not given a lot of space in public discourse and debate.

“I wanted to create a project that celebrated and captured the good times and the good experiences and the quite big contributions that they bring to regional places.”

Opportunity for insight

Across Queensland, it is estimated at times there are more than 20,000 jobs filled by seasonal workers on farms, the majority of which are foreign.

“These people live and work and spend their spare time in a community and having a bit more insight into their everyday life is something that perhaps a local might not ever see,” said Dr Barry.

“They might pass them at the supermarket queue, or they might see them in the street, but they don’t actually get to see from this perspective, their side of what life is like when they’re here in Australia.”

Treloar Guenthroth is the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) and Farm Supervisor on an orchard at Gin Gin, in the Wide Bay region. 

“I supervise all the work that gets done by seasonal workers — so the Tongans or Solomon Islanders, and sometimes we’ll use contractors with Koreans and Japanese, a lot of people from Asia, sometimes Timor, sometimes Samoa,” said Mr Guentrhroth.

While the citrus harvest is underway on the farm at Gin Gin, Mr Guenthroth has encouraged the seasonal workers to participate in the research project to snap photos of their daily lives.

This year, there were 50 seasonal workers on the citrus and blueberry farm, but some years that number was much higher.

Regardless of birthplace, language or culture, Mr Guenthroth said the seasonal workers were unified by a common goal.

“All they want is to improve their life for their family and their country and everyone they’ve got at home,” he said. 

Supporting a group of seasonal workers from different parts of the world was no small feat. Language was a common barrier.