UP TO 1,200 jobs in Australia were on offer at an expo in Dublin at the weekend.

The Australia Employment Expo 2011 at the Aviva Stadium featured 18 employers seeking to fill posts as soon as possible in fields such as engineering, nursing and construction.

Diesel fitters were particularly in demand, with one company, Dublin-based Osborne Recruitment, offering 100 such positions.

Western Australia will need 150,000 people to fill posts that will become available over the next five years, according to Keith Seed of the Western Australia Chamber of Commerce. He said Aus$240 billion (€175 billion) worth of projects would go ahead in the area in the next few years.

Western Australia had a two-speed economy, he said, and while areas such as hospitality and retail were struggling, there was a boom in mining, oil and gas.

Workers in demand could earn “very good salaries”, Mr Seed said. Diesel fitters, for example, could earn up to Aus$120,000 a year if they were willing to work in the difficult environment of mining sites.

Hatch, an engineering and construction company, was looking for more than 400 employees. Hatch senior recruiter Mike Boafo said the company was particularly interested in engineers with heavy industrial mining backgrounds.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service was also present, recruiting nurses and midwives.

Husbands and wives with buggies, single young men and women, and older unemployed people wandered from stand to stand at the exhibition in the hope of finding their futures there.

Midwife Aishling Garry, who attended with her husband Chris and 15-month-old Amelia, said they were seriously considering leaving Ireland. Though she was working, her husband, a civil engineer, had been in and out of work for the past three years.

They would be reluctant emigrants, leaving behind elderly parents who may never see their grandchild again. “We’d love not to have to go, but we have to think of Amelia’s future,” they said.

A 50-year-old man, who did not wish to be named, said he got the impression he was at the “older end” of acceptability for Australia, though he felt he would need to be older to have the experience the recruiters wanted. He was still getting work in the building industry, but did not know what his long-term prospects were. “I’d rather know what I’ll be doing in three months’ time than working from week to week,” he said.

Cathal Treacy, a young engineer, has employment here but not in his field. “I have no ties and no mortgage, thank God. And there are no opportunities here for me so I think I might actually go.”