I would never work for nothing. There are however the companies out there that you can get jobs with at your stage that pay you to fly their caravan (if that is the aircraft you want to try and start your carreer on). If you have a SA com then maybe try something like FEDAIR where i think you will be right hand seat on the van for a while and then move to the left. If you go to somewhare like maun you will start on the 206 and then move onto the van in about a year or so any way and you will have logged all PIC time single engine.
In my small opinion i would go for the PIC time in maun. you will get bonded in maun but if you fulfil your contract you won't have to pay a cent and you will get paid a salary and you will come out of there with about 2000 hours, all single PIC time with some turbine hours in the logbook. Not such a bad deal if you look at it in comparison to wanting to work for free. do the research though and see what works for you. read PFF post, it makes a lot of sense.
CD