From Australian Border Force to FIFO: Why I Started Drift Visa

If you'd told me a few years ago that I'd eventually be living in Indonesia, flying back to Australia to work FIFO, studying Australian immigration laws and policies and building my own migration business, I'm not sure I would have believed you.

But looking back, Drift actually makes a lot of sense.

My career — and life in general — hasn't followed a particularly straight line. I've worked for the Australian Government, packed up and built a life overseas, worked remotely, ended up on mine sites in Western Australia and eventually found my way into Australian migration.

And somewhere along the way, the idea for Drift started to take shape.

It started at the border

Before Drift, I spent a significant part of my career working for the Australian Border Force.

During that time, I dealt with complex cases and worked across national operations throughout Australia. It was a career that exposed me to situations, people and parts of Australia that I probably never would have experienced otherwise.

It also gave me a very different perspective on Australia's borders and the systems surrounding people entering and leaving the country.

People were constantly moving — for work, relationships, study, family, opportunity and sometimes simply because they wanted their life to look different.

Eventually, I became one of those people.

Then I left Australia myself

I moved overseas and have spent much of the past few years living in Indonesia.

Living in another country changes the way you think about migration.

Suddenly you're the foreigner.

You're the one figuring out visas, bureaucracy, language differences, banking, housing and all the other small things involved in trying to build an actual life somewhere that isn't your home country.

And there's a big difference between visiting somewhere and trying to make a life there.

I think that's one of the reasons I've become so interested in migration.

A visa might be the piece of paper that makes everything possible, but nobody actually dreams about the visa.

They dream about what comes after it.

The job. The beach. The relationship. The adventure. The fresh start. The chance to see what happens if you go.

Somewhere in there, I also ended up FIFO

Another slightly unexpected chapter was finding myself working FIFO in Western Australia.

FIFO is something I'd heard about for years, but actually working on site gave me a completely different understanding of the industry — the long days, the rosters, the money, the lifestyle and the opportunities it can create.

It's also why you'll see quite a bit of FIFO content on Drift.

There are thousands of people overseas who see videos about Australian mining wages and wonder whether they could do it too.

Sometimes they can.

Sometimes it's much more complicated than TikTok makes it look.

I'd rather explain the difference.

Finding my way into migration

Eventually, my career moved into Australian immigration work and I began studying Australian immigration laws and policies in much greater depth.

And the more time I spent around migration, the more I realised there was space for something different.

There is an enormous amount of information about Australian visas online.

The problem is that a lot of it doesn't feel like it was written for the person actually Googling the question.

If you're sitting in Germany, Indonesia, Colombia or the UK wondering whether you could move to Australia, you probably don't want to start by reading legislation.

You want someone to tell you:

What are my options?

Is this actually realistic for me?

What do I need to do next?

And preferably explain it without making you feel like you need a law degree to understand the answer.

That's where Drift came from.

Why I started Drift

I wanted to create the kind of migration brand I would actually want to use.

Straightforward. Approachable. Curious. And realistic.

Drift isn't about pretending that moving to Australia is easy or that there's a visa pathway for everyone.

Sometimes there isn't.

It's about making it easier to understand what's possible, what isn't, and what your next move could be.

It's also why Drift talks about more than visas.

We'll talk about FIFO jobs, working holidays, studying in Australia, finding work, moving your life across the world and the slightly less glamorous practical stuff nobody puts in the Instagram version.

Because getting the visa is only part of moving countries.

The bigger part is building a life when you get there.

More than getting a visa

Ultimately, I want Drift to be somewhere people come when Australia is sitting somewhere in the back of their mind.

Maybe you're actively planning the move. Maybe you're trying to work out whether you're eligible. Or maybe you've just caught yourself wondering:

Could I actually live there?

Because migration isn't really about paperwork.

It's about deciding you want something different for your life — and then working out how to make it happen.

My own path has taken me from working on complex operations across Australia, to building a life overseas, working FIFO and eventually finding my way into migration.

None of it happened in a particularly straight line.

And maybe that's part of the reason Drift exists.

Because sometimes the life you end up building looks completely different from the one you originally planned.

You just need to know what's possible.

Lou
Founder, Drift Visa

Stamped for adventure.