Danny Keenan and Jonny Jamieson are in no rush to return to Ireland.
But while cooking up lunch in a St Kilda hostel, the two friends have found themselves among a dwindling number of Irish backpackers willing to make the long trip to Australia. 
"When I was a teen, every second week there was an Australia-leaving party," Mr Keenan, 25, said.
"It has slowed down. Now you get maybe one every two months."
Mr Keenan said many of his friends back home are now considering other options, such as a working holiday in Canada, with its proximity to the US, shorter flight from Ireland and football-friendly time zone.
Young people are also starting to choose to stay in Ireland rather than travel as the economy picks up, he said.
The trend among the Irish, however, has become a major concern for Australia's tourism operators and farmers, who rely on backpackers to work in cafes, pubs and in fruit picking.
The number of working holidaymakers from Ireland has dropped by more than half in only three years, Immigration Department figures show.
There were nearly 12,000 working holidaymakers from Ireland given 417 visas in 2012-13, but that number dropped by 56 per cent to just over 5000 people last financial year.
There were similar double-digit declines seen in backpackers coming from Taiwan and South Korea over the same period.
The total number of working holiday visas granted each year fell by 5.3 per cent to 226,812 people last year, the figures reveal.
Meanwhile, the hospitality industry is suffering a shortage of 38,000 workers, which could grow to 120,000 within four years, according to a recent Deloitte Access Economics report.
Richard Mulcahy, CEO of industry body AUSVEG, said more needed to be done to entice backpackers here.
"The working holidaymaker program, and especially the second-year visa extension for regional work, is a huge contributor to the on-going productivity and profitability of the Australian vegetable industry."
Tourism Minister Richard Colbeck said the government had expanded the working holidaymaker program to include a handful of new countries, including China.