Inside the lives of the million Australians who make up the night-time economy
The city streets change at around 11pm, Abdullah Farzad says.
Roads choked by traffic become open avenues, and noises hidden during the day emerge.
Lonely footsteps on pavements, the closing of unseen doors, the gentle ticking of Farzad's bike chain as he makes his deliveries.
Seven days a week, from early afternoon through to 6am, Farzad can be found cycling around Melbourne, glimpsed as a silhouette passing illuminated shopfronts as he delivers Uber Eats orders.
"I like it during the night," Farzad says.
"It's, like, very quiet."
The 30-year-old arrived in Australia about five months ago, relocated after a decade living in India as a refugee from Afghanistan.
When he arrived, delivery work was one of the few jobs he could get — all he needed was a phone and a bicycle.
There's not always a place for Farzad to eat. He'll often have dinner on a park bench during gaps in orders, enjoying fruit or a chip sandwich under the orange glow of streetlights.
Sometimes he'll head to the Gig Workers' Hub, a not-for-profit providing a safe space for delivery drivers in Melbourne's CBD.
"I don't drink coffees," Farzad jokes ruefully.
"I thought I wouldn't be able to do like overnight jobs, but then for the first week I tried, and found I'm fit to do it.
"Somehow my body … adjusted."
Along with the quiet, the night brings hazards.
In the two months he's been making his nightly deliveries, Farzad's jacket and helmet have been stolen, and he has had water sprayed in his face by young men in a passing car.
"I lost my balance and I fell down. It was like minor scratches and all … They were trying to be cool, I don't know, making fun of others on the road," he says.
At the Gig Workers' Hub, there are often shared stories of near misses, or thefts.
On another occasion, a driver reversed into Farzad.
"My bike was under his car. Somehow, I managed to skip from the bike," he says.
"The guy came out and, at first, he ran away. I don't know what he thought, then he came back and said 'I'm really sorry'."
Somehow, the bike wasn't damaged, but it was a reminder to stay vigilant.
"If you play music, it might disturb or distract you, so I never put any music on," Farzad says.
The hidden workforce
As Farzad works through his nightly deliveries, an estimated 96 per cent of the country is resting.
Joining him in after-hours work — defined as happening between 6pm and 6am — are at least 1 million Australians who collectively support a $174 billion night-time economy.
We know these figures because for the first time a nationwide study has counted them.
The University of Melbourne Night Shift project began in 2022, analysing ABS data, labour surveys, and conducting interviews with night workers to build the picture of the nocturnal workforce.
Anna Edwards, a research fellow on the project, says these night-shifters include nurses and carers tending to patients, construction workers on jobs too disruptive for daylight, and police and security guards on patrol.
They're also cleaners tending empty offices, freight workers, and fuel station attendants on the graveyard shift.
"The work is invisible to us, and so we really want to shine a light on those workers," Edwards says.
The study will wrap later this year, but Edwards says it's already highlighted the need for more people trained to help night-shifters.
"Irregular schedules negatively affect worker health and sleep patterns, yet expertise in managing these impacts by many employers is limited," Dr Edwards says.
Greater government awareness was also needed when making decisions on public transport hours and amenities like toilets.
"We plan our cities and our economies for the daytime," she says.
Farzad says access to toilets is the single biggest issue delivery riders discuss, with most public toilets closing as the night winds down.
"We usually discuss with our other riders: how do you manage? Sometimes we need to wait until four o'clock until the train stations are open."
Late at night, the only options are fast-food chains like KFC, Maccas, and Hungry Jacks, but most close their washrooms except to customers.
When you're counting every dollar, buying something every time you use the toilet feels untenable.
Working alone
Another issue riders face is isolation — when Farzad was resettled, it was after a decade spent in India where he had a strong circle of friends.
Other than a few words exchanged between riders waiting outside restaurants, a shift can be spent in isolation.
It's a struggle DoorDash driver Deanna Coates says is the hardest part of the job.
The 28-year-old routinely works until 9:30pm, primarily delivering groceries.
She says she doesn't usually even see the people she's making deliveries to, because they prefer items be left at the door.
"I'm a fairly sociable person generally," she says.
"I would prefer there would be a bit more human interaction."
Delivery driving is one of the few jobs that fits around caring for her five-year-old child, and she too finds peace in the night.
"It's a little bit getting out into nature because you are just in this nice crisp air, the stars, and that can be kind of relaxing in a way," she says.
But for a woman working alone, the night also makes her nervous — particularly when a job requires alcohol delivery.
"I accept them, because it does start getting a little bit quieter after 8:30pm," she says.
"But, you know, sometimes I'm delivering alcohol to a bunch of drunk men down a quiet street."
She says better street lighting, and the ability to leave parcels at front gates if uncomfortable, would help.
She takes comfort from her husband being able to check in.
"If he's ever sort of wondering how I'm going, he can check where I am. I think I find that comforting as well if I did run into any trouble."
It's something delivery companies say they're aware of. Doordash says its app allows workers to contact emergency services quickly at night, and sent reminders to customers to switch external lights on if ordering after 8pm, to make night deliveries easier.
Uber Eats also says it's dedicated to worker safety, and pays its delivery workforce to return alcohol to stores if customers were intoxicated or unable to present a valid ID.
A growing part of the workforce
Data from global labour market monitoring company Lightcast suggests night work is increasing, both in total roles and as a proportion of total jobs.
The number of night-time roles advertised online in Australia has risen gradually, going from about 19,800 in 2012 to more than 83,100 in 2024.
Night work also increased from just over 3 per cent of total jobs advertised in 2012 to more than 6.6 per cent in 2024.
Lightcast vice president of APAC operations, Daniel Leadbeater, says it appears night work is generally lower paid, with a $10,000 difference in both the mean and median advertised salary when night roles are compared to the general market.
"Night work is paid lower in a number of areas, such as sales and community service, but actually higher in areas such as maintenance, repair, and installation," Mr Leadbeater says.
He says the top career areas for night work include health care, hospitality, sales, maintenance and cleaning.
Decades in the dark
Mark Heinicke falls into this final category.
He has been working by moonlight for 42 years, first on Adelaide's midnight garbage trucks, and then the pre-dawn street sweeping crews.
Many strange things happen at night — he's helped drunks, and lost dogs have become ride-along companions, but the strangest thing Heinicke experienced was in 2009.
It was 4:15am and he was driving over the Torrens River after an unremarkable shift.
"I always got a reflection off the river and it wasn't there," he remembers.
He pulled over, walked down to the river's edge and found the entire thing empty.
The broad river that divided the city had become brown mud, pockmarked with puddles and the skeletons of rusted bicycles.
A weir had malfunctioned, releasing the river's water, but Heinicke had no way of knowing that at the time — it was just an inexplicable event.
"It was really something to behold," he remembers.
"There was a car no one knew was there … Police swarmed it in case there was a body in the boot."
When the city woke it became a media circus, but the 63-year-old believes he might have been the first to see it.
Over the decades, workmates have become a nocturnal family and traditions have formed — coffees and pastries at the 24-hour Bakery on O'Connell and stops at all-night Pancake Kitchen.
"I guess I am a father figure these days," Heinicke says.
As traditions formed, the nights have changed.
It used to be that at 11pm, every traffic light flashed amber and the streets belonged to the garbage trucks.
Now there are delivery drivers out all hours, Heinicke says, health workers passing through, gamers at internet cafes, and a new breed — boot-campers — running about city parks at 6am.
Dawn still brings the same feeling, though.
"You get to see the city wake up every morning. I never get sick of that — seeing people getting up to a clean city," Mark says.
Most people didn't even appreciate work had occurred, he says.
"It's not like a bunch of fairies come in the middle of the night," he laughs.
"If you could see Hindley Street on a Saturday morning, you'd realise."
The move to a 24-hour economy
Developing the night-time economy is an increasing focus for state governments.
Queensland last year appointed its first nightlife commissioner, while the ACT and New South Wales have explicitly tasked ministers with growing night-time economies.
In NSW, Michael Rodrigues has served as the state's 24-hour economy commissioner since 2021.
Rodrigues says impetus for the commission began after a 2019 Deloitte report found, despite having a night-time economy making over $27 billion annually, Sydney was missing out on $16 billion a year.
He says his office has so far focused upon quantifying and profiling the workforce.
Mobile network data has been used to see where people go at night and how long they spend there.
Card data shows where they're shopping, and tap-on-tap-off data from NSW's Opal public transport system identifies how they move about.
Investigations revealed in 2024, there were 872,620 night-time workers in NSW — 21 per cent of the state's workforce.
"Many of these are sort of hidden," Rodrigues says.
"We should direct people's attention to that so other services can start thinking about how to look after them."
Rodrigues also says the night has changed, from expectations of overnight deliveries to the opening of Sydney's first 24-hour airport — Western Sydney International (WSI) in 2026.
The commission is now focused upon identifying pockets of activity where councils and private businesses can better serve night-shifters.
This might mean late night cafes in health precincts, better after-hour public transport around entertainment districts, or 24-hour gyms in student areas.
A place to gather
The difference small changes can make to night-shifters is seen in Farzad and Deanna's experiences.
Between 4pm and 9pm, they can stop at the Gig Workers' Hub where they can take a break, charge phone and bike batteries, and talk over a hot drink.
The hub, which is backed by the City of Melbourne and delivery app companies, was created by Andrew Copolov after he witnessed the isolation Uber drivers face.
Many of the workers are migrants with no network, Copolov says. One recently told him the Hub was the first time she had spoken to an Australian since arriving from China.
The modest space would be missed by the people coming and going from the popular market, but for the delivery workers, it's a welcome break from solitude.
"There are times where it's been a really jovial atmosphere … there's a sense of a meeting of cultures," Copolov says.
"A nice frame through which you see that take place is food, there are some really nice things that happen when people might share food with each other."
For Farzad, relocated to Australia without much of a support network, the Hub has proven a vital connection.
Farzad aspires to become a tradesperson.
"I'm just waiting, I need save some money to get a vehicle first, then I can get started [on] my studies," he says.
"It's just starting. I am very optimistic about life."
Credits:
Reporting: Geraden Cann
Photography and video: Patrick Rocca, Che Chorley and Trudi Arter