Does FIFO Mining in Australia Count Toward Your Second Year Working Holiday Visa?

By Vicki & Amy

The Free Range Humans

6 min read

Yes, FIFO mining can count toward your WHV extension. But the location of your site matters enormously.

UK readers: skip ahead, you don't need regional work at all anymore.

Irish readers: here's exactly what you need to know.

If you're Irish and you've been looking into FIFO, this question has almost certainly crossed your mind.

You've heard the money is good. You've heard the lifestyle is intense. And you've heard that if you want to stay in Australia beyond your first year, you need to complete 88 days of specified work in a regional area. What you haven't been able to find is a straight answer on whether FIFO mining actually counts.

We're going to give you one.

1. UK passport holders, the quick win

If you're reading this on a UK passport, you can skip the whole specified work debate entirely.

Since July 2024, UK passport holders no longer need to complete any specified regional work to extend their Working Holiday Visa for a second or third year. All three years are available to you without a single day of regional work. The rule simply doesn't apply.

FIFO mining in Australia still makes enormous financial sense for UK readers, but the second-year visa extension question isn't one you need to worry about. The guide has everything else you need to get started.

2. For Irish passport holders, what is specified work?

To extend your Working Holiday Visa (subclass 417) for a second year, Irish passport holders need to complete 88 days of specified work in a regional area of Australia. For a third year, it's 179 days. Both conditions need to be met: the right industry and the right location.

The good news: mining is a qualifying industry. The catch: not every mine site is in a qualifying location.

Think of it as a two-key system. First, the industry must be eligible, mining and construction are both listed, which is why FIFO roles are often a strong path to your 88 days. Second, the location must be in a qualifying regional postcode as defined by the Department of Home Affairs. If either condition isn't met, the days don't count. It doesn't matter how remote the site feels or how physically demanding the work is, the postcode is the deciding factor.

3. The Tropic of Capricorn rule, which sites qualify

This is where a lot of people get caught out. The qualifying locations for specified work are based on specific regional postcodes set by the Department of Home Affairs. For Western Australia, the practical rule of thumb is that sites above the Tropic of Capricorn qualify, and sites below it generally doesn’t.

Here's what that means in practice:

• The Pilbara, Port Hedland, Karratha, Newman and surrounding areas, sits well above the Tropic and qualifies. This is where the majority of WA's major FIFO operations are based. If you land a Pilbara role, your days count.
• The Goldfields, Kalgoorlie and surrounding areas, sits below the Tropic of Capricorn and generally does not qualify under the northern Australia regional rule. This catches a lot of Irish readers off guard.
• Other regions: the Kimberley, Murchison, and Gascoyne generally qualify. Always verify the specific postcode for your site with your employer or on the Department of Home Affairs website before accepting a role.

Don't assume your site qualifies. Confirm the postcode before you accept the role, not after you've already worked 88 days.

This is one of the most common mistakes we see Irish readers make. They spend three months on site, assume it's all counting toward their extension, and then find out at the end that the postcode wasn't eligible. The work was great, the money was great, but the visa extension wasn't coming.

A note on the 6-month employer rule

If your site is in northern Australia (Pilbara and above), the 6-month employer limit on the WHV doesn't apply to mining and construction as of January 2024. This means your specified workdays can accumulate with the same employer well beyond six months, which is exactly what you want when you're building toward 88 days.

Quick reference, UK vs Irish passport holders

4. How calendar days are counted

Days are counted as calendar days worked, not total hours. This matters more than most people realise when they first start crunching the numbers.

•      Each day you perform eligible work counts as one day, regardless of shift length.

•      A 12-hour shift and a 10-hour shift on the same day count the same: one day.

•      Days off between rosters do not count, your two weeks off on a 2:1 roster are not qualifying days.

•      Travel days, standby days at home, and induction days off site generally do not count.

•      Days from multiple employers and placements stack, if you're on southern sites where the exemption doesn't apply, moving between locations via labour hire effectively resets the 6-month employer clock, as each new site placement can count as a new employer.

On a standard 2:1 roster you accumulate roughly 14 qualifying days per four-week cycle. At that rate, reaching 88 days takes approximately six full roster cycles, about six months of continuous FIFO employment on a qualifying site. Starting late in your visa year with no qualifying days banked is a position you don't want to be in.

5. What you need to document

The 88 days needs to be properly documented to count. Completing the days is only half the job, if you can't prove it to the Department of Home Affairs at the point of application, it's as if those days never happened.

Employer sign-off in writing

Your employer needs to confirm your employment in writing, a letter on company letterhead stating your full name, the dates you worked, the location of the work (including postcode), and the type of work performed. Most will provide this, ask for it before you leave the role, not months later.

Labour hire agencies can complicate this. Your legal employer of record may be the agency, not the mine operator, so the agency is the entity that needs to provide your confirmation letter, referencing the actual site postcode where you worked. Get this before you leave every single role. Chasing documentation from a labour hire agency six months after your contract ended is a genuinely difficult situation, and entirely avoidable.

Keep every payslip from day one.

Payslips are your independent corroborating evidence. They show the dates you were paid, the company, and create a paper trail that supports your employer letter. Store digital copies in cloud storage from the moment each payslip arrives, FIFO environments are hard on electronics. Treat your visa documentation with the same care you'd treat your passport.

Calendar days, not hours

A standard FIFO day counts as one day regardless of shift length. A 12-hour shift counts the same as a 10-hour shift. All FIFO roles are paid so the 'paid work' requirement isn't usually an issue, but it's worth knowing.

6. The most common mistake

Accepting a role without confirming the postcode qualifies. We cannot stress this enough.

It costs you nothing to check. It could cost you your entire visa extension if you don't. Before you accept any role, ask your employer or recruiter for the site postcode, then verify it against the Department of Home Affairs specified work postcode list. The guide includes the full list of qualifying WA postcodes so you can check in seconds rather than navigating government websites.

The Goldfields region is the most common trap. Kalgoorlie is not a suburb; it's over 600 kilometres inland from Perth. But the Department of Home Affairs doesn't care how far from Perth you are. The postcode either appears on the qualifying list, or it doesn't. Hundreds of Irish WHV holders have completed 88 days in Kalgoorlie and discovered after the fact that none of it counted. There's no recourse after the fact.

Also worth noting site postcodes can occasionally differ from the nearest town's postcode. A mine site 80 kilometres outside a regional hub might have its own postcode. Always verify the actual site postcode, not just the FIFO hub location.

7. The short answer

Irish passport holders: FIFO mining absolutely counts toward your 88-day specified work requirement, but only if your site is in a qualifying postcode. The Pilbara qualifies. The Goldfields generally doesn't. Check before you commit.

UK passport holders: since July 2024, you don't need regional work at all. All three years of the WHV are available to you without it.

Either way, get to site, do the work, and make sure you're documenting everything correctly from day one. The guide has the full postcode list, the documentation process, and the step-by-step extension walkthrough.

The complete FIFO guide for UK & Irish passport holders

There's also a layer of stuff we couldn't fit here, the things you only learn from actually doing it. What to pack. The Perth admin checklist you need to work through in order before you can legally set foot on a site, TFN, bank account, Telstra, Medicare, driving licence, and more. What site culture really looks like. The prescription medication issue nobody warns you about. How couples get on the same site. And a tax timing strategy that, done right, keeps more of your money at the 15% rate. That's what the guide is for.

Get the guide → thefreerangehumans.com/fifo-guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Authors

Vicki & Amy, The Free Range Humans

Vicki and Amy are a couple who spent over a decade working across Western Australian mine sites before going location-independent in 2025. They now travel full time with their daughter. Between them they've covered open cut, underground, processing plant, and operational roles across sites including Greenbushes, South Flank, Leinster, and Port Hedland, as well as physiotherapy, injury management, project management, and business improvement at BHP Iron Ore. The Free Range Humans is where they share everything they know about making it work.

Want to see what this life actually looks like? We share the unfiltered reality of location-independent life with a toddler in tow, the mine site stories, the travel, the chaos, and everything in between.

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