Before you land
Screenshot your visa grant letter and save it offline, not just in your email. Airlines sometimes ask for it at check-in, border officers occasionally want it on arrival, and airport wifi always fails at that exact moment. Note your visa grant number somewhere separate too, because you will type it into forms for the next year. Sort travel or working-holiday insurance BEFORE flying if your country doesn't get reciprocal Medicare (see below), and read the fine print for manual and farm work exclusions now, not after an injury. Book only your first 2-3 nights of accommodation; you will want to move once you meet people, and week-long prepaid bookings are the number one arrival regret. Finally, know Australia's border rules on food: declare everything edible, wooden or plant-based on your incoming passenger card. Declaring is free, failing to declare gets you fined, and nobody wants to start their year with a biosecurity infringement.
Day 1: TFN application
Apply for your Tax File Number the day you arrive. It is free at ato.gov.au, takes about 10 minutes online, and you must physically be in Australia to apply. Never, ever pay anyone for a TFN. The 'TFN service' websites that charge a fee are middlemen at best and scams at worst; the real thing costs nothing. You need an Australian postal address for the letter, so use your hostel (tell reception to expect it) or a mate's place you can actually access. The number arrives by post within about 28 days, but you can legally start work while waiting: give your employer a TFN declaration saying you've applied. The deadline that matters is 28 days on the job. After that, an employer with no TFN on file must withhold tax at the top rate, close to half your wage, so chase that letter. When it arrives, photograph it and store it in your Vault. Your TFN is yours for life, even across multiple visas, so never share it with anyone except your employer, your bank and the ATO.
Day 1-2: SIM & phone
Grab a prepaid SIM or eSIM at the airport or any supermarket; starter packs are cheap and activation takes minutes with your passport. Here is the one decision that matters: if you are EVER heading regional, and on a working holiday you almost certainly are, get a SIM on the Telstra network. That means Telstra itself or Boost, the only reseller with the full Telstra footprint. The cheap city-focused providers are great value in Sydney and useless 20 minutes past the last suburb, which matters when you're on a farm 40km from town trying to call about your next job. Port your number rather than starting fresh each time you switch providers. Save these numbers now: 000 for life-threatening emergencies, 13 13 94 for the Fair Work Ombudsman. Full network breakdown, coverage maps and data-stretching tricks in the Phone & Internet guide.
Day 2-3: Bank account
Australian banks open accounts online with just a passport, and most let you start the application up to three months before you land, then verify your ID in a branch on arrival. The big four (CommBank, NAB, ANZ, Westpac) give you branch access, which is genuinely handy for depositing cash wages in farm towns where the nearest anything is the post office. Digital banks approve faster and often have better apps and no fees; plenty of backpackers run one of each. Whatever you pick, link your TFN to the account within the first month or the bank withholds tax on your interest at the top rate. And understand why the account matters beyond convenience: wages landing in YOUR named account create the paper trail that proves your 88 days. Cash-in-hand jobs with no payslips and no bank deposits are close to unprovable when Immigration asks, so a real account is visa infrastructure, not admin.
Day 3-4: Medicare or check your insurance
UK, Ireland, NZ, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Slovenia, Italy and Malta have reciprocal health care agreements with Australia. If that's you, enrol in Medicare at a Services Australia service centre with your passport and visa details, and you get subsidised essential care: doctor visits, public hospital treatment, cheaper prescriptions. It does not cover ambulances in most states (ambulance cover is state-based and a $50-100 yearly subscription in some states is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy) and it won't cover dental, so keep some insurance anyway. Everyone else: your travel insurance IS your health system, so check it actually covers what you'll be doing. Plenty of cheap policies exclude manual labour, farm work, or work at heights, which you discover in the back of the ambulance. If your policy excludes work, upgrade it or buy a working-holiday-specific policy before you take your first shift.
Day 5-7: Super fund
Superannuation is retirement money your employer must pay on top of your wage, currently 12% of ordinary earnings, into a fund in your name. It is YOUR money and you can claim most of it back when you leave Australia for good (the tax on that is brutal, but it's still your money; see the Tax & Super guide). The mistake to avoid this week: doing nothing. If you never pick a fund, each employer may park you in a different default, and three orphaned accounts each bleeding fees and insurance premiums can quietly eat small balances. So pick ONE large, low-fee industry fund now, note the fund name, your member number and the fund's ABN and USI, and hand the same details to every single employer for your whole trip. Check your fund's app after your first month of work to confirm contributions are actually landing. An employer 'forgetting' super is one of the most common ways backpackers get ripped off, and it's reportable to the ATO.
Day 5-7: start the evidence folder
Future-you applying for a second-year visa, or chasing a tax refund, or reporting a dodgy employer, needs evidence that present-you can capture in seconds. Start the habit now: photograph every payslip the day you get it, save employment contracts, note each employer's name and ABN, screenshot job ads and pay agreements, and keep the addresses of everywhere you stay. All of it goes in the cloud, because phones get lost, stolen and dropped in rivers with impressive regularity on this visa. Reconstructing six months of farm dates from memory in a hostel the night before a visa application is a rite of passage nobody enjoys. The Matey Vault exists for exactly this: one place for payslips, certificates and visa documents, attached to your 88-Day Tracker.
The first-week mindset
A few things nobody tells you at the airport. Jet lag plus cheap goon plus a new hostel social scene is a rough combination; give yourself two quiet nights early on. Say yes to the hostel family dinner, because the people you meet in week one become your job leads, van co-owners and travel crew for the year. Don't lock in a lease, a van purchase or a farm job in your first fortnight; every big decision is better made after two weeks of talking to backpackers who've been here six months. And if the city is draining your savings faster than expected, that's normal. The cities are for arriving; the good stuff, and the affordable stuff, is up and down the coast and inland. When you're ready, the Finding Work guide is your next read.