Your specified work only counts toward the 88 days if you do it in the right place. The Department of Home Affairs decides that by postcode. A town can feel like the outback and still not count; another can feel ordinary and count for everything. The postcode is what matters. Different industries count in different areas, and the 417 and the 462 don't follow the same rules.
Where beats what. A postcode has to be on the official list for the work to count. Cairns (postcode 4870) counts for every specified-work industry; Sydney (postcode 2000) counts for none.
Five designated areas: Remote and Very Remote Australia, Northern Australia, Regional Australia, bushfire declared areas, and natural disaster declared areas.
The most common way people lose a second-year application is working in a postcode that doesn't count, usually a hospitality job in an ordinary regional town. Hospitality only counts in Northern or Remote and Very Remote Australia.
417 and 462 are different. Mining counts on the 417 but not the 462. Fishing and tree work count anywhere regional on the 417, but only in Northern Australia on the 462.
Three months means 88 calendar days; six months (third year) means 179. You have to complete the same number of ordinary working days a full-time worker would.
UK passport holders who apply on or after 1 July 2024 don't have to do any specified work for a second or third 417 visa.
Our free 88 days map shows every eligible postcode for your subclass and industry, and checks any postcode in seconds. It runs off the official Home Affairs lists, checked daily.
You did the work. Three hard months of fruit picking, or fencing, or pouring beers in a town you'd never heard of before you arrived. Now you are staring at the second-year application, and the doubt creeps in: did any of that actually count? Was the postcode right? Did the hostel job qualify, or only the farm one?
That worry is normal, and it's justified. The single most common way people lose a second-year Working Holiday application is doing real work in a place that doesn't count. The rules ignore how far from a city you were, or how rural the town felt. What counts is the postcode, checked against lists the Department of Home Affairs publishes and quietly updates. This guide, and the free map that comes with it, exist so you never carry that doubt into the application.
Where do my 88 days actually count?
Your specified work counts only if the postcode where you physically worked sits on the Department of Home Affairs eligible list for your visa and your industry. The job title is irrelevant. The same task can count in one town and fail in the next one down the highway.
Because the lists are long and change over time, the fastest way to check is a map. Our free 88 days eligibility map lets you pick your subclass (417 or 462) and your industry, then shows every postcode in Australia where that work counts. You can also type in a single postcode and get a straight yes or no. It reads the official 417 and 462 lists and is checked against them every day.
Two things trip people up before they even open the map. First, "regional" is a legal category built from postcode lists. It has nothing to do with how a place feels. A town can look like the middle of nowhere and still be the wrong postcode. Second, your industry decides which kind of area the postcode has to sit in. Farm work and hospitality follow completely different maps.
UK passport holders can skip almost all of this. If you hold a UK passport and you apply on or after 1 July 2024, you don't have to do any specified work for a second or third year 417 visa at all. No 88 days, no postcodes to check. This exemption is unique to UK nationals. For how it works, see our complete Working Holiday guide.
What are the five designated areas?
There are five designated area types across the whole scheme, and they are the same for the 417 and the 462. Every industry maps onto one or more of them.
Remote and Very Remote Australia. Areas classified as Remote or Very Remote under the official statistical geography standard.
Northern Australia. The Northern Territory plus the parts of Queensland and Western Australia above the Tropic of Capricorn.
Regional Australia. The big one for farm and construction work. A fixed list of postcodes, and it does not mean everywhere outside a city.
Bushfire declared areas. Postcodes declared for bushfire recovery work.
Natural disaster declared areas. Postcodes declared for flood, cyclone, and severe-weather recovery work.
Start with Regional Australia. It's where most people do their days, and its name is a trap. The term is a legal category tied to a postcode list. It says nothing about how country a place feels. Read it as geography and you'll pick the wrong town, and that is exactly what gets applications refused.
Which industries count in which area?
The industry you work in decides which of the five areas your postcode has to fall in. This is where the 417 and the 462 split apart, and it is the part most guides get wrong.
Three differences catch people out. Mining does not count at all on the 462. Fishing and tree work count anywhere in Regional Australia on the 417, but only in Northern Australia on the 462. And tourism and hospitality follow the strictest rule of all on both visas, which has its own section below.
Recovery work sits outside the table. On the 417, bushfire recovery work (done after 31 July 2019) counts in bushfire declared areas, and flood, cyclone, and severe-weather recovery work (done after 31 December 2021, for applications from 5 April 2025) counts in natural disaster declared areas. Critical COVID-19 healthcare work (after 31 January 2020) counted anywhere in Australia. Recovery work can be paid or volunteer. Everything else on the list has to be paid.
The map applies all of these rules for you. Pick your subclass and industry and the eligible postcodes light up; the ones that don't count stay dark.
The mistake that refuses the most second-year visas
Tourism and hospitality work only counts in Northern Australia or in Remote and Very Remote areas. It never counts in an ordinary regional town, no matter how small or far from a city that town is. This one rule, misunderstood, refuses more second-year applications than any other.
Here is the trap in plain terms. Picture two backpackers in Dubbo, in central New South Wales. One picks fruit on an orchard. The other works the bar at a hostel. The fruit picker's days count, because plant and animal cultivation counts anywhere in Regional Australia. The bar worker's days do not, because Dubbo is not in Northern Australia and is not Remote or Very Remote. Same town, same 88 days of honest work, opposite outcomes.
Cairns (postcode 4870) counts for every specified-work industry. Sydney (postcode 2000) counts for none. In between sits every ordinary regional town, where farm and construction work counts but hospitality does not. If you are doing hospitality to earn your second year, you have to be in the north or in a genuinely remote area. Check the exact postcode before you take the job, not after.
If you have already lined up a hospitality job hoping it will count, put the postcode into the map before your first shift. It takes ten seconds and it can save you a wasted three months.
Does your actual job count? It comes down to the tasks
Whether your work counts comes down to the tasks you actually did each day. The employer's name doesn't decide it, and neither does what the business calls itself. One employer can have some staff doing qualifying work and others doing work that counts for nothing.
Picking fruit on an orchard counts as plant and animal cultivation. Selling that same fruit at the farm shop does not, because retail is not on the list.
Secondary processing does not count. Turning grapes into wine, grain into flour, or hops into beer is manufacturing, and manufacturing doesn't count. Only the primary activity does. Whatever happens to the produce afterwards is beside the point.
Recovery work can be volunteer; everything else must be paid employment under Australian law and awards. Cash in hand with no payslips cannot be counted, because you cannot prove it.
The practical takeaway: describe the actual tasks you did each day, and check that those tasks, in that postcode, sit on the list. The job ad's wording does not decide it.
Which places are regional, and which are not?
Regional Australia for specified work includes all of South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and Norfolk Island, plus the regional parts of the other states. Yes, that means Adelaide counts as regional for farm and construction work, even though it is a capital city.
What does not count is the big population centres:
Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, and the Central Coast
Melbourne metro
Brisbane and the Gold Coast
Perth metro
The Australian Capital Territory
Everywhere else is probably regional for farm, construction, and (on the 417) mining work. Probably is not good enough. The only way to be sure is the exact postcode. A farm on one side of a metro boundary can count while an identical farm a few kilometres closer to the city does not. That is exactly what the map is for.
How are the 88 days counted?
Three months of specified work is defined as 88 calendar days, and six months (for a third year) is 179. To reach that total, you have to complete the same number of ordinary working days a full-time worker in your industry would complete in that period.
A few official rules decide what lands in your count:
Part-time is allowed, but it takes proportionally longer to reach the total, because you are completing fewer working days per week than a full-time worker.
You can't count one calendar day as more than one day, even if you work two jobs on the same day.
Paid public holidays and paid sick days count. Unpaid days lost to weather, like a rained-out picking day, do not.
The work has to be done on your current Working Holiday visa. There are limited exceptions for some bridging visa situations, but as a rule, work done before your visa was granted or after it ended does not count.
That is the postcode-and-days core. For the full picture on counting part-time and casual work, combining stints across employers, and building your documentation, see our complete Working Holiday guide.
How do you prove the work was in an eligible postcode?
Your evidence has to pin down where you physically stood and worked. Who paid you is not enough on its own. The postcode of the work site is the fact a case officer checks against the list, so it has to appear clearly in your paperwork.
Payslips showing the employer name, their ABN, the pay period dates, and ideally the work location.
An employer reference on company letterhead stating the work site address and postcode, your dates, and the tasks you did.
Bank statements showing the payments landing, matched to the payslip dates.
One detail matters more than any other here. A single employer can run several sites, and only some may be in an eligible postcode. A labour-hire company might have its head office in Sydney and send you to a farm in Griffith. The postcode that counts is Griffith, where you stood and worked. The Sydney head office on the payslip is irrelevant. Make sure your reference names the actual site.
The easiest time to gather all this is while you are still working. Keep it in mind from the day you take the job. When you apply for a second or third year, the Department will want payslips and a reference letter proving where you worked. A letter is easy to get on your last day. It's far harder to chase from an old boss months later, after you've moved to the next town or flown home. So keep every payslip as you go. Before you leave, ask for a reference that names the work site address and postcode, your dates, and the tasks you did. Sort it out on the spot, and it's one less thing to rebuild at the end.
Tern Tip
Before you pay AUD $1,000 for a second or third year application, check that every postcode you are relying on is eligible for your industry and subclass. The fee is not refundable, and the most common way people lose it is assuming a rural cafe job counted when it never could. The 88 days map is free, so it costs nothing to make sure before you commit.
Why the postcode lists change, and how to stay ahead of it
The Department updates the eligible postcode lists over time, so a postcode that counts today might not have counted a year ago, and the reverse. Bushfire and disaster declared areas move most, because they follow real events. New disaster-recovery postcodes were added on 5 April 2025, for example.
For most people this is background noise. But if you are planning your work months ahead, or leaning on a recovery-work postcode, a quiet change to the list can bite. So check against a source that keeps up with the government. An old blog post, or a screenshot someone shared in a Facebook group, can be a year out of date and quietly wrong. Our map is re-checked against the official Home Affairs pages every day, so it reflects the list as it stands today. No stale snapshot, no year-old screenshot.
The only 88 days map most people find is a hobby site that only covers the 417 and has not been updated since 2021. Ours covers both the 417 and the 462, and the underlying data is checked daily against the government's own lists.
Frequently asked questions
Check before you work, not after
The best time to check a postcode is before your first shift. Doing it while you fill in the application is too late. A ten-second check now can save you three wasted months, and it's the line between a smooth second year and a refusal on work you genuinely did.
Open the free 88 days map: see every eligible postcode for your subclass and industry, and check any postcode in seconds.
Complete Working Holiday guide: eligibility, counting your days, documentation, and the UK exemption in full.
462 country caps: for Work and Holiday applicants watching for their country to reopen.
When you are ready to apply, start with Tern. We check your postcode eligibility, work type, and day count against the current lists before anything is submitted, so a case officer never finds a problem you could have caught first.
