Furneaux Lodge: Our Working Holiday Experience

The beautiful Endeavour Inlet, Queen Charlotte Sound, Marlborough… A place we were privileged enough to call home for just over three months.

This was a great decision for three main reasons:

We met a whole bunch of amazing people!

We managed to see a remote but beautiful area of New Zealand (which we probably wouldn’t have done on a backpackers budget)

We were able to build our savings up quite nicely while doing the above

This article is going to give you an overview of our experience at Furneaux Lodge, from the living situation to why we’d recommend a job like this as a backpacker.

Table of Contents

How Did We Find The Job?

We found the job on the Backpacker Board. This website is so helpful as you can filter for what type of job you’d like, where you’d like it etc etc. It is specifically designed for those coming to New Zealand looking for work, but obviously you can also use it if you are a New Zealander.

It has some really useful pieces of information on there, as well as listings for hotels and activities.

We have included a screenshot of the website so you can see for yourself.

Once we went through usual interview stage (click here to read our top interview tips for live in jobs in New Zealand that can be applied everywhere) and got the job (yay), we travelled up to Picton. This was where our boat for Furneaux Lodge departed, which was free as we were staff.

You obviously need to have your NZ bank account and IRD number set up to get paid, so we recommend doing that ASAP.

Living and Working at Furneaux Lodge

Furneaux Lodge is a holiday destination in the Marlborough Sounds. This adventure was our first proper (full time) job on our travels. This is not an advert or promotion for Furneaux Lodge, so we’re not going to talk about what the company has to offer or anything like that.

If you’d like to book a holiday, book using the link above- we will receive a small commission which helps keep this website running at no extra cost to you!

What we are going to talk about in this article is our working experience at the lodge as a traveller.

We were there for three months from January through to April 2023, which is the end of summer in New Zealand.

These were some great months and we were able to see the Sounds in all their glory. The sea stayed warm enough for swimming right up until we left and maybe even after. The sunsets were some of the most beautiful we’ve seen on our travels and sitting with a glass of something on the jetty watching the sun slowly drop behind the hills became a regular event. If you went out when it was dark and clear, the stars would also be a beautiful sight to behold.

The reason we took these jobs was because we thought we’d be able to save good money here due to the location, and also that it isn’t really a backpacker budget friendly place to travel so no better way to see the Sounds than working there.

Another really great benefit about being where we were was being able to take advantage of all the fun activities that guests on holiday came to enjoy on our days off.

A photo of Furneaux Lodge in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

Accommodation on the Queen Charlotte Track: All You Need to Know

The Queen Charlotte Track is a gorgeous 70km hike in...

The Marlborough Sounds: Why You Should Visit

The Marlborough Sounds is possibly one of the most beautiful...

The Living Situation

As the job was so remote, we lived on site.

We absolutely loved this as it was similar to being back at university and living with housemates.

It was fun always being around people in the same travelling situation as us. We were all there for the same reason.

It was fun sharing stories and getting suggestions/ tips on where to go and what to do from each other.

We’ve always said that, from our personal experience, working in hospitality has allowed us to develop some of the best friendships with people as you go through so much together! Our experience at The Clubhouse restaurant was exactly the same, as not only did Jess and I meet there, but we’ve both got some solid, lifelong friends from there. Here is no different.

If anyone from Furneaux Lodge that we worked with is reading this, then know that we love you!

READ MORE: Interested in our full and up to date working journey through New Zealand? Click here.

Saving Money

Due to the location, we were a 50-minute direct boat ride from Picton. This was the most remote either of us had lived and worked at this point- and we’re from rural Dorset and Somerset!

But in terms of saving money, it was fantastic.

We were charged about $160 a week each for rent and food and we obviously paid tax, but the rest was ours.

With nothing to really spend our money on, we just swept most of it into savings. We did spank a whole paycheque in Wellington for Jess’s birthday, but after that we were literally only spending about $60 every two weeks. Insane!

Removing the ‘life costs’ (fuelling the car, food shopping, going to the pub, or however you spend your money) has really opened our eyes to how easy it is to boost our savings in these environments. In our journey since then, we have mostly worked jobs that are in remote locations and offer this kind of life-style.

Example

Let’s run some numbers and look at an example.

Let’s assume you are being paid $23 an hour and doing 45 hours a week, $1,035. Payroll at Furneaux is fortnightly (or it was in 2023), so $2,070. Let’s say tax is $400, rent is $320, leaving a net figure of $1,350.

We had nothing to spend our money on here apart from the odd bit of online shopping and a few beers. So it is 100% plausible to save $1,000-1,200 every paycheque, with $150 for those few beers or whatever. Three months of doing this and, in theory, you could have $6,000- $7,200 saved. Pretty cool.

This doesn’t include any holiday pay you may receive when you leave either, which for us was 8%.

These are fictitious numbers, but they’re not entirely random as they’re based on our experience… I feel like I have to say that this is not financial advice to avoid someone suing us or something. This example is also rough figures regarding tax, your rent and take-home pay may vary depending on where you are working, hours worked, rate of pay etc. But being able to shovel away $1000 per paycheque is totally possible.

It’s obviously not mega money, and it’s not a get rich quick scheme, but having a live in job is definitely two birds with one stone in our humble opinion.

Work-Life Balance

This is a topic which is always interesting. I think if you want to work at a place like this, where you live and work on site, then expect to always be thinking about work in some capacity. On our days off, we often found ourselves walking through the bar, saying hi to our friends and colleagues at work, and inevitably asking “is it busy today?” or something similar.

However, being on site meant that our commute to work was a matter of seconds– the length of time it took to walk down the stairs! This was great because if we finished work at 3pm, we could be in the sea by ten past.

The first month was epic as we had all of the fun things to experience- kayaking, paddle boarding, swimming, walking the Queen Charlotte track and going to Punga Cove, Furneaux’s sister restaurant.

But we found that after a month or so, the novelty wore off a little. Rather than spending our breaks in our split shift swimming or paddle boarding, we eventually ended up napping or chilling out.

The Work

The work here that we came to do was very standard hospitality. We were employed as “all-rounders” which meant exactly that- you did what was needed! Between the two of us, we certainly were all rounders as we worked in pretty much every department – front of house, kitchen hand, housekeeping, and Jess dabbled with reception a little bit.

Our Favourite Moments & Memories at Furneaux Lodge

Bioluminescence

The bioluminescence was the most amazing experience as it was so surreal.

If you don’t know what it is, it is when a living organism (algae in this case) produces light. If you’ve every seen a firefly, then you’ve seen bioluminescence!

For us, the sea was full of algae which produced a really cool electric blue light then it was disturbed – eg by rocks thrown into the water.

We have a few memories attached to this.

Seeing the bioluminescence for the first time was such an experience. It was genuinely out of this world and something that neither of us has ever experienced before.
One of the staff members was off when we all went out to see it and I will vividly remember him saying “F*ck this is so cool, I’m gunna jump in it”. And he did. It was absolutely iconic in my mind haha.
We paddle boarded over to the floating platform with some friends. The short journey over was amazing as our movement in the water was causing the algae to turn that electric blue colour. But once we got over to the platform, one of our friends Phil fell into the water and Ben decided / was persuaded to jump into the water with him too. The results were amazing! The movement really brought out the bioluminescence glow all around their entire bodies in the pitch black darkness of the water. We tried to capture this on the GoPro (called Gary) but there just wasn’t enough light for it to pick up any images.

Our (failed) Mount Stokes Walk

We attempted to walk up Mount Stokes at the beginning of February with an amazing couple that we met at Furneaux.

Our journey saw us take the staff boat over to Punga Cove, and then we set off by foot for Mount Stokes. The walk itself was lovely but a bit of a slug at times, we had great company and were chatting the whole way. This was the biggest walk we did while at Furneaux Lodge.

Sadly, we could not make the ascent up Mount Stokes due to bad weather and the track being borderline dangerous in those conditions, but this is up there as one of our favourite experiences as we had such a lovely day.

Playing Frisbee on the Lawn

This was absolutely one of my (Ben) favourite activities.

Sometimes it would be a group activity, sometimes it would be just myself and one of the other guys working there just hooning a frisbee at each other for an hour. Whichever it was, we always had fun. It is one of those memories that I look back on even these months after it happening and cherish it.

Jumping Off of the Jetty

Jumping off the jetty into the deep water of the Marlborough Sounds was awesome. We had many good times doing it, whether it would be on a break between a split shift or on a day off. Our first day off ended with us joining everyone at the jetty with a beer to play catch and it was simply paradise. It was quite the social area at times.

Chilling on Site

People come here on holiday because it is a phenomenal location– we spent our days off here!

We’ve already mentioned the jetty, and just chilling down there was also a great way to spend down time. Jess often took a book down and enjoyed the sun (I also did occasionally but I had been ‘reading’ Lord of the Rings for about six months now and am currently only on page 185 and will forever be on page 185).

We had a few other favourite spots. The hammocks, which overlooked the beach type area with views of the super tall fern trees and the sounds. The floating platform which was a short swim or paddle board way from shore and gave cool views looking back at Furneaux Lodge. Then there was a bench in the middle of the lawn towards the water where we watched many sunsets or sat under the stars.

If you appreciate natural beauty and are happy being way from civilisation for a bit, you’d love working here on your travels.

Our Working Holiday Experience

Overall we had a great time here!

We made some great friends who we will keep in touch with, we’ve lived in such a cool part of the world for three months, and saved some money which can fund our travels and trips around New Zealand.

We saw sting rays and seals, we explored the Queen Charlotte Track, and learned that a single measure of alcohol in New Zealand is only 15ml.

A successful first full-time working holiday job!

After Furneaux Lodge, we knew that we had so much more of this amazing place to see… Read the article above to see what happened next!

In terms of boosting our earning potential in New Zealand’s hospitality industry as work holiday visa workers, obtaining your Duty Managers Certificate is an absolute no brainer. Better jobs, better pay, cool locations… Lets go!

Visit Our Blog

For more content from working holiday travellers to working holiday travellers, check out our blog for more!