21-year-old left the U.S. for Australia on a working holiday visa—why she says her life is better now

In 2022, Bella Robben, 21, was living with her parents in St. Louis, Missouri, working as a barista in the morning and a waitress at Outback Steakhouse at night.

"Pretty much all I would do at home is save up so that I could travel," Robben tells CNBC Make It.

Robben has been backpacking since she was 19 years old and has traveled to 19 countries in two years.

Robben's journey to Australia started in May 2023, when she left St. Louis to go backpacking in Peru. She traveled around the country for three weeks, then to Colombia for six weeks before flying to Europe. She lived in Barcelona for a month, London for another month, and Lisbon for three weeks.

"I've always known that it's something that I enjoy doing," Robben says.

By September 2023, thanks to a growing social media presence on TikTok, Robben was given the opportunity to take a brand trip with Australia's Northern Territory Tourism Board. Her flights were covered by Student Universe, a travel company for students and young people.

Robben's original plan was to visit Australia for just one week, but right before the trip she decided to apply for the country's working holiday visa.

"If I got a visa, then I would be able to stay for a long time, make money, and go backpacking in the South of the country," she says.

She was approved just a few days later.

"I didn't leave knowing that I was going to move to Australia, and now I don't necessarily want to go back because I do like my life more outside of the U.S. than in it."

Australia's working holiday visa allows people from ages 18 to 30 years old — or 35 from some countries — to have an extended holiday and work in the country to help fund their 12-month stay. If granted the first visa, applicants can apply for a second and third visa after meeting specific requirements. Each new visa grants an additional 12-month stay and costs 650 AUD or $425 USD.

Robben stayed in Australia's Northern Territory for about a week before flying to Melbourne where she lived in hostels for a few months while apartment hunting. That November, she found an apartment above a nightclub that she rented with two new friends she met at the hostel.

Monthly rent for the unit was $2,390.00 AUD or $1,569 USD. Robben's portion was $523 a month, according to documents viewed by CNBC Make It. 

"It was the greatest apartment known to man. It was the perfect backpacker apartment," Robben says. "It was right in the hub of everything. We always had people over and had the best neighbors. I loved that apartment so much."

Robben and her roommates used Gumtree, a free marketplace in Australia, to outfit the apartment with just about everything they needed.

In Melbourne, Robben worked as a waitress in a small café.

After about seven months in the apartment, Robben and one of her roommates bought a car together, left Melbourne, and drove north to Port Douglas, a seaside town in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland.

Eventually, Robben found a job nearby in Far North Queensland as a hotel receptionist.

One perk of the hotel job is cheap accommodations on the property. Robben pays just $98 USD a week for her portion of a house she shares with two roommates. According to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, Robben gets paid $682 USD weekly and rent is automatically deducted from her paycheck. 

Robben's daily life in Far North Queensland includes morning walks on the beach, working on her social media channels, and answering emails before starting her shift at noon. She gets out of work around 7 p.m. and heads to the grocery store to get ingredients for that night's dinner or goes out with friends. On her days off, the 21-year-old takes day trips around the country.

"I didn't ever really think that I would stay for this long, and now I've found such good friends, the money is pretty good, and it's comfortable living here," Robben says. "There's so much to do and so much nature, so it's very hard to pull myself away from here."

In Australia, Robben says she is able to earn enough to have a life and to save. It's the opposite of what she thinks things would be like if she were back home in America.

"I didn't care to move out of my parent's house because I knew that all I would be doing is working to afford rent, and that's just not something I wanted to do," she says. "I sacrificed having a life of living in the city and making friends because I wanted to travel."

Now, approaching one year in Australia, Robben says she isn't the same person she was when she first arrived in the country.

"It's genuinely wild to think it's been a whole year. It was so daunting moving here, and I had a moment when I didn't want to be here," Robben says. "Now, I can't believe I ever thought that."

As the youngest in her family, Robben says she was always very protected, so moving so far away has helped her force herself to do so many things alone. I really have to rely on myself and trust that I know what to do," she says.

Robben says she never really had a life in America: "I didn't really have many friends because I moved around quite a bit growing up," she says.

Earlier this year, Robben took a trip back home to St. Louis because she missed her family, but she says she wanted to get back to Australia as soon as possible.

"Almost immediately when I got back, I felt this intense feeling because everything is so career-focused in the U.S.," Robben says.

"I like ambition, and I feel like I have ambition, but it can also be very overwhelming."

Robben is close to the end of her first working holiday visa and when she finishes up the 88 days she's required to work, she's taking off to backpack through Southeast Asia.

"I'm hoping some opportunity or some country will pull me in a certain way," she says.

Robben is considering applying for a second working holiday visa in Australia, but not right away: "I'm kind of keeping that option in my back pocket for when I run out of money and need to come back and work," she says.

For others looking to live and work aboard, Robben says it's OK to be a bit delusional.

"Obviously, things went wrong for me, and not everything was perfect, but I did trust that it would work out. I think it's fine to be delusional because you never know," she says.

"I just want to live in the moment," Robben added. "I want to be living in the right now and appreciate exactly what's happening."

Conversions from the Australian dollar to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 Australian dollar to 0.66 USD on August 9, 2024. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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