Overseas backpackers bring home-farm experience to Victorian operations

Skipton farmer David Jackson and his family have hosted backpackers from across the world for about 12 years.

Mr Jackson said their impressive portfolio of workers were from countries including Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, England and Belgium.

He said the backpackers, often found through the International Rural Exchange program, generally had agricultural degrees and considerable farming experience

"We've had a mixture of boys and girls, we don't have a preference really, for between six and nine months to help out between spring, summer, autumn period," he said.

"Work quietens down in the wintertime so it suits us to do that."

He said the COVID-19 pandemic had upset the system with travel stoppages, but he believed backpackers had started to return to normal levels.

Mr Jackson said they first started with a Danish backpacker, who built a fence on their farm during a one-in-100-year floods.

"It was so wet that summer, we had floods and we couldn't do any work for a number of weeks because it was so wet so we got him building that stone fence," he said.

"In the end he said he couldn't leave until the fence was finished.

"He came back a couple of years ago and visited us, he brought his uncle and grandmother back and was able to show them the fence he built.

"It'll be a memento for him for a long time."

Mr Jackson said the program helped fill labour shortages on-farm, and workers could fulfill fencing, drenching, chaser bin jobs and more.

"After that we thought we'd give it a go and we had a Canadian, and he worked out really well," he said.

"In the earlier days they lived with us in the house so we got to know them really well, we got invited to his wedding eight years ago in Canada."

He said they kept in contact with most of the former backpackers, who often stayed in agricultural careers.

"One has an agronomy business in Alberta, the Canadian guy has a ranch back home," he said.

Theo Lafrogne, hailing from Bar Le Duc in France, just finished working for the Jackson family on their Skipton and Ararat properties and has just moved to Parilla, SA, to work on a potato and onion farm.

After he finishes, he said he hoped to join the family farm in France in June and bring his many ideas from his backpacking experiences.

"It was a very good experience for me because it allowed me to see a very different organisation and ways of doing things while discovering very beautiful places nearby," he said.

"For me, the most impressive thing I noticed was the optimisation of the equipment and the scale of the operations.

"This results in material costs, which are low compared to France."

Mr Jackson said Mr Lafrogne was a welcome addition to harvest, and he now looked to find an extra set of hands for their sowing program.

"We had Theo on the chaser bin and he was really good once he got the hang of it," he said.

"Theo has been a great worker, he's a real gentleman, every morning he'd come and say 'good morning David' and shake my hand."

He said the backpackers had enabled them to enjoy time away from the farm while business carried on as usual.

"It was good for our children too, they got to experience different nationalities as well," he said.

"They've all been good in their own particular way, and that's what we've found is some might prefer one type of work to another.

"They have the right sort of attitude, they're here to work and very obliging and we learn about their culture as much as they learn about ours."