"I'm here in the middle of an island, no one around me, no contact with anybody. I need to just be smart, not open my mouth ... If I do something that puts my life in danger, then I'm screwed."
These are the thoughts flicking through Natalie's head as her employer forces her to watch him slaughter lambs on his remote farm on Kangaroo Island.
"[He'd] throw them off into piles and say, this is where they go and this is what happens when this annoys me. He was a very angry person," she says, reflecting on her experience to Insight's Jenny Brockie.
"It was almost like he wanted to make me scared ... [and] I was so frightened."
Natalie is one of a number of foreign workers sharing their stories on the ; stories of exploitation in formal and informal industries; of employers taking advantage of employees keen for income but often with little knowledge of their work rights in Australia.
Over the past few years, the Fair Work Ombudsman has had to step in to help migrant workers recoup . In 2013, forced labour offences were passed in , but the laws remain untested.
Back then, Natalie was backpacking through Australia with the idea of settling permanently. The IT worker had taken an enjoyable au pair job with a family in Sydney, but after a year was to complete 88 days of employment in regional Australia to extend her visa.
Hopping on to Gumtree, she found an advertisement for farm labouring work on Kangaroo Island, off the South Australian coast.
"I checked him out on Facebook, checked out the comments, Googled him, Googled the company, ABN number, everything ... it all looked fine."
But stepping off the plane at Adelaide and climbing into her new employer's car, she realised things were amiss.
Not only was he drunk, as he drove her to the property, the wife and other workers he'd mentioned would be keeping her company, were missing. She was alone on a farm, where the nearest town was almost 50km away, with no internet or phone signal. The nearest neighbours were 13km away.
She was alone on a farm, where the nearest town was almost 50km away, with no internet or phone signal. The nearest neighbours were 13km away.
As she began work with him the following day, he was verbally abusive and aggressive. Natalie didn't mind the work - including docking lambs, a common practice of removing their tails to prevent infections - but his intimidating nature that played to her unease with certain tasks, like slaughtering, was disconcerting.
He was also yet to pay her.
Around 2am one morning, the owner's mates came around, eight or nine of them she estimates, drunk. She locked herself in her room.
"They were rude, I could hear what they were saying outside about some girls that I know were taken off the farm previously and about myself, they were just vile," she says. "And they were smashing on the window and smashing on the door and then calling my name, telling me to come out."
She lasted 15 days on the property, before she was able to use her knowledge of IT to hack into the employer's disused modem and connect to online messaging service WhatsApp. From there, she was able to contact her au pair mother, who called the police to collect her.
To add insult to injury, she was never paid for her work, and the Department of Immigration refused to count her time towards the required 88 days.
The police said there was not much they could charge the farmer with.
More oversight and protection needed for foreign workers
On hearing Natalie's story, lawyer Giri Savaraman, who has experience fighting cases of forced labour, noted that many foreign workers who find themselves similarly unpaid after work are reluctant to initiate legal proceedings, with the risk legal costs will eclipse the amount they are owed.
"This is effectively slavery," he says. "She's not getting paid at all, she can't go anywhere ... there needs to be some sort of additional protection for people that are particularly vulnerable like this and some sort of register or recourse [for them]."
This is effectively slavery.
Other industries also benefit from the lack of oversight afforded to workers - particularly in nannying and au pair employment.
Selina Groll was also an au pair when she first came to Australia at 18, and was promised work with a family on Sydney's affluent north shore. She was keen to see how single-mum parenting was different to Germany, and the offer seemed generous: $250 per week for 35 hours of light household work and minding the children, as well as food and board, and a car with petrol.
This promised experience was far from reality.
"The mum ended up being drunk pretty much every night," she tells Insight. "At one point she ignored me ... I had to pay for my food, she didn't pay for it, she took the car away so I wasn't feeling comfortable."
"The arrangement was she pays me every week $250 ... Normally I got paid between $180 or under, and then one week I got only $150."
Associate Professor Joo-Cheong Tham, from the University of Melbourne, specialises in labour law and says Selina's experience is exemplary of how exploitation can occur in these areas.
Selina Groll, sharing her story on Insight. Source: Insight
"This case I think highlights one of the many black spots in the labour market, that is areas where there's significant risk of noncompliance under our labour laws," he says. There is a tendency to regard domestic work as informal because it is performed within the home, and therefore not subject to legal arrangements.
"What you then have is sort of a somewhat feudal belief that the wages and conditions of these workers, including Selina, are the discretion of the employer," he says. "And in most cases, this is wrong morally, this is wrong legally."
This is wrong morally, this is wrong legally.
Tham says that Selina would have been entitled under the Fair Work Act to at least the minimum wage, and paid annual leave and sick leave.
Savaraman also points out that foreign workers who find themselves in these situations don't have the same support options or knowledge networks as domestic workers do.
"There's not going to be a union that you can join. If you're coming from overseas you might have no idea of your labour rights or the fact that there's an Ombudsman that you can contact," he says.
"You're so vulnerable because you're in this situation where you're subject to this family and control, that you're not going to be able to speak up."
Insight explores the exploitation of foreign workers in Australia: its pervasiveness, and whether anyone is being held accountable | | Catch up online now:
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