Cameron Victor is “shaking a little” as he strums his guitar for customers dining at a resort in far northern Western Australia.<\/p>\n
Today he’s on stage, but on any other day you can find him in the kitchen, prepping food and washing dishes.<\/p>\n
“The show must go on,” he says.<\/p>\n
Cameron was also “pretty nervous” when he re-entered the workforce as a kitchen hand at Lily Lagoon, but his “suck it up and smash it” attitude helped him through.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Getting a job as a kitchen hand gave Cameron Victor and his family new opportunities.\u00a0 (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
The Kununurra resort offers employment and training to local Indigenous people.<\/p>\n
“Life has been pretty hard for me \u2014 growing up and hanging with the wrong crews, I’ve been down some sad roads before,” Cameron says.<\/p>\n
“This is a life-changing opportunity for me and my family. It gave me a brand-new start.”<\/p>\n
Seventy per cent of employees at Lily Lagoon are Indigenous. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
For Cameron, the job represents a second chance after a prison term.<\/p>\n
For others, including Miriwoong woman Shartne Duncan, the resort offers a first taste of employment.<\/p>\n
Her experience as a barista helped her find employment elsewhere, but now she’s back as a housekeeper and wants to train as a receptionist.<\/p>\n
“You wouldn’t know what to do at first, but once you get the hang of it it just goes as a routine,” Sharnte says.<\/p>\n
“It’s the best feeling you’ll ever have, even if you never worked before.”<\/p>\n
Sharnte says she has never felt afraid to ask for help from her colleagues. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
For the money and for the soul<\/p>\n
The men in the maintenance crew share laughs and a love for motors.<\/p>\n
One of them, Trason Simon, 17, bought an electric scooter with his first pay.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Trason got a job with the maintenance crew at Lily Lagoon after he decided to leave school. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
He got a job at the resort after he dropped out of school, which has inspired some of his friends who aren’t working or studying.<\/p>\n
“Some of the boys saw me getting a job and they got jobs \u2014 they just need a bit of a push from the homies, from the brothers,” Trason says.<\/p>\n
“Life’s just boring staying home, not getting up to much, humbugging family.”<\/p>\n
Getting a job also “dramatically changed” the life of one of Trason’s colleagues, Tremayne Reid Ryder.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tremayne working on the resort’s grounds. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t in a good place when I wasn’t working. Then I started working and things started coming good,” Tremayne says.<\/p>\n
But he says employment is not the most obvious path for those stuck in a cycle of disadvantage and trauma.<\/p>\n
“Our Indigenous people aren’t exposed to this sort of stuff,” Tremayne says.<\/p>\n
“They want to point the finger, but for non-Indigenous people it’s a bit easier when you’ve grown up around that sort of life.”Jobs for locals<\/p>\n
Linking local workers with the regions’s hospitality and tourism businesses, which perennially struggle for staff, is a long-running goal for many Kimberley community groups.<\/p>\n
Prue Jenkins, the chief executive of Lily Lagoon operator Wunan, says helping local Indigenous people join the workforce boosts the wider community.<\/p>\n
“The hospitality industry has been staffed largely by backpackers or visa-holders coming through, which accommodates the seasonal nature of the employment,” she says.<\/p>\n
“However, we want local people coming into these jobs.”<\/p>\n
Prue says Lily Lagoon is not just an employer but “a pipeline for local talent to come through to other jobs”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prue Jenkins hopes more Indigenous people can gain the skills and confidence to get tourism and hospitality jobs. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
Indigenous workers account for 70 per cent of the resort’s staff and many of them are assisted by Job Pathways, which connects jobseekers and employers.<\/p>\n
“What we see is a skills gap. Closing that skills gap sits at the heart of this program,” Job Pathways interim chief executive Henrik Loos says.<\/p>\n
Lily Lagoon has been federally funded for three years for 17 positions under the Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program (RJED).<\/p>\n
The program, which creates 3,000 remote jobs across Australia, replaces the old Community Development Program, which failed to reduce high unemployment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Senator Malarndirri McCarthy visiting Lily Lagoon, one of the government’s remote jobs trial sites. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
Henrik thinks better mentoring can help keep people in jobs.<\/p>\n
“The new program is much more tailored towards the industry-specific needs,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Therefore, we believe it will be much more successful.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Henrik says employment services should meet the needs of jobseekers and employers. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
But there are also some barriers that make workers drop out.<\/p>\n
“Providing a lot of the wraparound supports is absolutely critical,” Prue says.<\/p>\n
“So the first thing we look at is ‘does that staff member have safe accommodation locally?'”<\/p>\n
After ensuring secure accommodation for staff, Wunan also looks at transport options.<\/p>\n
Some employees use the bus, but others are given a bike, assistance to gain a drivers licence and financial counselling to save up for a car.<\/p>\n
A workplace of belonging<\/p>\n
Growing confidence is as important as building skills and the resort aims to provide a work environment Sharnte describes as “comfortable, like family”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sharnte says getting a job and help securing accommodation has made her feel proud and hopeful. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
She is proud of having a customer-facing job and hopes it inspires others in her community to work in hospitality.<\/p>\n
“When other people see a local working in a big place like this, it makes them feel excited and happy,” Sharnte says.<\/p>\n
“Future-wise, I hope I see young people like me working here, to make them feel good on country.”<\/p>\n
Employing locals has helped to boost the community as a whole. (ABC Kimberley: Giulia Bertoglio)<\/p>\n
Cameron found his happy place in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes our fears just hold us back,” he says.<\/p>\n
“I say to those people, ‘Just give it a go. You never know until you give it a go.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameron Victor is “shaking a little” as he strums his guitar for customers dining at a resort in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,142,138,137,134,141,143,139,136,135,140],"class_list":{"0":"post-96","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cdep","10":"tag-indigenous-jobs","11":"tag-indigenous-unemployment","12":"tag-jobs","13":"tag-kimberley-news","14":"tag-lily-lagoon","15":"tag-remote-jobs","16":"tag-remote-jobs-and-economic-development-program","17":"tag-rjed","18":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}