In 2017, I was working an office job in Portland, Oregon, reading Lonely Planet travel guides while I was supposed to be focused on my work. I was getting paid $11.25 an hour, we were barely a year into 45's presidency, and winter was coming.
I wanted out.
I came across an article by Paris Marx entitled How I Saved $8,000 in Four Months by Moving Abroad. It was about how they had gone on a working holiday to Australia - a place where wages were fair, public transit was widely available, and most importantly for me, it was almost summer.
This was before the arrival of digital nomad visas, and Australia was one of the only places in the world where Americans under the age of 30 could easily get a work visa. And sure enough, the company I worked for had an office in Melbourne and my boss was willing to put in a good word for me. I only had a little time before I aged out of qualifying for the visa, so I put in my application and it was granted on the spot.
A few months later, in November 2017, I landed in Melbourne, with the right to live and work in the country for at least a year.
