Our story
Why Matey exists
Matey is the app I wish I'd had in my pocket when I was backpacking around Australia: jobs, visa answers, farm reviews, rides, secret spots and real mates, all in one place, free for backpackers.
It started with a backpack.
More than ten years ago I spent my working holiday in Australia. Picking fruit, sleeping in hostels and vans, chasing the next job and the next beach. It was the best time of my life, and some days it was really hard.
Facebook groups were our lifeline.
They still are, and they're brilliant: thousands of backpackers helping each other every day. But they were never built for this.
A good answer sinks down the thread within hours. The same questions come back every morning: how long is the visa taking, does this postcode count for my 88 days, is this farm legit? People offering a seat in their car have to repost every single day to stay visible.
And when someone warns everyone about a farm that doesn't pay, the warning is buried by next week, just in time for the next backpacker to walk straight into it.
So we built the place I wish I'd had.
Matey keeps what the groups share, and makes it easy to find:
On Facebook groups
On Matey
Great answers sink in a few hours
Answers stay, sorted by topic and town
The same visa questions every day
Real visa wait times, updated by backpackers, with alerts
Rides need reposting every day
Every ride stays visible until it leaves
Warnings about bad farms vanish within a week
Farm reviews stay up, good or bad
Hard to search for jobs that count for the 88 days
Live jobs every morning, 88 days marked
Strangers in a thread
See who's heading your way, say g'day
Our mission.
Make every backpacker's working holiday in Australia easier, fairer and more fun, by keeping what the community knows in one place where anyone can find it. Built around the people who use it, not around an advertising algorithm.
Not instead of the groups. Alongside them.
Keep loving your Facebook groups. Ask there, chat there, have fun there. Matey is where the answers stay, so the next person doesn't have to ask again, and where your review of a farm still protects someone next year.
Why your reviews matter so much.
A lot of what you see on Matey starts from official sources: the business register (that's how we show "Registered business"), the government's 88-day postcode lists and the National Harvest Guide. Solid, but frozen in time. A farm changes owner, a hostel goes downhill, a boss stops paying.
What keeps Matey alive and honest is you. Every review, every rating, every tip about a place makes it more accurate for the next backpacker looking for exactly what you're looking for today. Worked somewhere? Take two minutes to rate it, good or bad. Someone heading to that same farm next season will thank you.
Free for backpackers. Built with them.
Matey is free for backpackers, and it gets better every week because of what you tell us. Rate the places you've worked and stayed, share what you know, and tell us what's missing. You're not just using Matey. You're building it with us for the next backpacker.
Free for backpackers. Our first 500 members stay free forever. 299 of 500 founding spots left.
Ben, founder of Matey