“I moved to Australia at the end of June in 2025, so I’ve been here almost a year now. I’d always considered doing a PhD, I always really liked academia, but I never really knew what the options were. When I was in my third year, I was talking to my supervisor about wanting to study abroad for my PhD in Canada, New Zealand, or Australia. It turned out that his partner was from Sydney. Listening to her talk about her experience over there and about Australia in general just put it in my head.

“When I then met my partner it turned out that he actually wanted to move to Australia as well. So we both agreed Australia was it, and it all went from there.

“At that point I was working as a secondary school teacher in Bristol. I started researching online, looking at the projects available, and finally came across one that had a link to what I’d studied in my masters and which sounded great. I emailed the supervisor and looked more seriously at the uni and at Perth as a location.

“It turns out the project I’d first seen had already gone, but my application must’ve been ok though, because that person passed my details on to their colleague, who then contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in working on a different project which hadn’t even been advertised yet.

“My project is electrochemistry for antimicrobial applications, developing surfaces specifically. All the people in my lab are working on silicon-based projects, so we are all linked in that way, but my project is my own. I’m the only one doing antimicrobial. “I normally start my day in the office. It’s a shared lab though, and everyone’s really helpful. So for example, the other day I had to make a compound, but both me and another guy in the group needed it, so we did that together. It’s really nice that it’s an open plan lab, I’ve never had that before. Normally research groups are in separate labs. So if you ever need to do like NMR, which I don’t really know how to do, I’ll just ask my friend and he’ll help me. So it’s very collaborative, even though you’re doing your own research.

“I found everything a bit overwhelming when I first got here, even though everyone was so nice. I hadn’t been in a research lab for a couple of years, since finishing my masters, and my confidence with experiments was low. But everyone was really helpful. I had guidance from my supervisor, but also one of the postdocs in our group is trained on everything. So they would train me really well and then leave me to do it independently, but they were still there if I needed help.

“The study environment here is great, it feels as though you can go to anyone. People are so friendly, it makes it easy to ask for and to get help. I feel a lot more confident now, which is great. Initially it was quite difficult, but I feel a lot better and it’s actually nice to realise how much you’ve progressed and how much you’ve
worked through.

“I expected living in Australia to be a lot more laid back, which it is. The work-life balance is just as I thought it would be. It’s really nice. I’d get quite burnt out previously, but here – touch wood – it hasn’t happened yet.

“It’s so lovely here; the summer is amazing. All summer we go to the beach every weekend with our friends. I genuinely felt like I was on holiday every time and it just completely resets you. I could have the worst week at uni, but then because I’m swimming and outside all the time, everything seems better. I feel I’m a lot more chilled as a person here.

“One thing I’d recommend anyone looking at study by research in Australia do is to look carefully at where you’re potentially moving to – not just the place, but also into your research group. Try to get a sense of whether these are people you’d like to work with, how things run, is it going to be an environment that suits you. I’m aware I was really lucky – even though I didn’t do any of that, everything has worked out for me, I’ve landed on my feet. But it would have been more sensible to do more research into everything before I came.

“I feel I’ve changed a lot as a person since coming to Australia. Coming to a new place where all my support system’s gone, other than my partner, was difficult and overwhelming at first. But it made me really work on myself, to think about what kind of friends I wanted, what sort of new hobbies I’d like to do. I surf now, for example, which is insane. This experience has made me push myself out of my comfort zone – because I was already out of it by coming to Australia. And I think that is something that I wouldn’t have experienced if I’d stayed in the UK for my PhD.

“When you first arrive you realise you’re on your own. You don’t know anyone, don’t have any friends, so you have to put yourself out there. You don’t have your normal environment around you and so studying isn’t the whole thing anymore – it’s more a question of adjusting to a new life as well. The confidence that you get from coming through that is really tangible.

“My mum gave me some great advice. I got the PhD offer from Curtin and I was very unsure about whether to take it. And she just said: Go. Just try it, if you hate it you can come back. But you should give it a chance. So I came and I’m so glad I did. It’s amazing. Creating a life for yourself in a new place takes effort, and time. It doesn’t just happen! But the effort is so worth it in the end.”