“I arrived in Australia in late January. We left home in Jersey and did a three-week family holiday, staying on the Sunshine Coast, before I moved into my student flat.

“There’s eight of us in the apartment and I share a bathroom with one other person. Everyone I live with is really, really nice, so I think I’ve lucked out there. I live in Toowong, which is a perfect location because I’ve got two supermarkets and a chemist warehouse within a 2 minute walk of my building, plus it’s on a bus route. There’s a bus to campus that comes every five minutes and the journey takes about 10 minutes, or I could get the ferry to university, the stop is also a five minute walk away. And there are two pubs as well, so it’s good for socialising.

“In Queensland all public transport journeys cost 50 cents each [25p] so you can literally go anywhere!

“I study social science and I do a double major, one in environment and society and the second in development. I take four modules per semester. One is an introduction to environmental studies, which is basically catching everyone up to around an A-level geography standard sort. I just finished an assignment on stakeholders within shark management in Queensland for that. Then I have introduction to inequalities and development, which is about neoliberalism. We cover war, conflict and environment. And then I have a module on political problems and solutions, which is looking at ideologies and putting them to case studies. The fourth course is societal problems and solutions, which is a foundation unit for social science and which looks at social constructs of the world. It has a lot of Indigenous content – because I do social science in Australia – but overall it’s looking at what society is like and what builds societies.

“Choosing units and enrolling in them wasn’t the easiest process, but it also wasn’t difficult. You just had to use your initiative and e-mail someone to ask for help. The welfare team here and the student support generally is really good.

“There’s a selection of electives that link to your course and there are just so many to choose from. Next semester I think I’m going to do Australian politics and carbon and energy management, and an anthropology unit which is required. And then I’ve got something to do with people in urban areas. But with electives you can do languages, law, economics, marine biology, learn guitar or rugby skills, religious studies, maths – anything, it seems. There’s a lot of freedom to customise your degree however you want it to be.

“I joined loads of societies when I got here: The surf society, social running, life saving, swimming, athletics. I think I joined the cheese and wine society too, there were loads on offer. I feel like it’s a process where you need to weed through which ones are good. I do a fitness swimming squad and we all go for coffee afterwards and stuff like that. So it’s really lovely. I found the athletics got a bit boring and intense, so I stopped that. Surf Society is my favourite. We go camping probably once a month – I’ve just got back from a trip to Stradbroke Island with them which cost me like $180. They paid for and organised everything, and I just took my surfboard and went along. They also give lessons for anyone who doesn’t surf already, and they do dinners and beach parties and stuff.

“And then I also do a run club, which isn’t part of UQ, but obviously it’s Australia and everyone’s up at 5am doing run clubs. I am now one of those people who get up really early and goes for a run.

“The more active the society, the more regular the meet ups, the easier it is to make friends. That’s why surf is really good, because we meet up a lot, and I like my run club because I meet them every week, same with swimming. I swim three times a week. Sport has really helped me to create some structure to my routine here – I don’t have so much uni work that I need to be doing it 24/7!

“I like that because the weather’s always so consistently good, there’s always something to do. So me and my friends often go hiking on the weekends, like we’ll drive up to the Glasshouse Mountains or somewhere like that.

“Students who are actually from Brisbane usually live at home. That’s quite nice because I’ve got lots of friends that live at home. I sometimes take my washing to their house and I have family dinners and stuff like that. I’m probably getting a car next semester so I can adopt someone’s dad to help me buy a car. It’s nice to know that there is an adult to fall back on, considering you’re so far away from your actual parents. Like one of my friends’ parents is going to drive me to the airport when I get my flight home for the break.

“The uni culture here is very different to what I’d always been told UK uni culture would be – where everyone’s drinking Monday to Friday. At first I found quite hard to adjust my expectations because I’d been told my whole life that when I go to uni I should be drinking all the time. That isn’t me in the slightest and if I was doing that, I would not be enjoying it! But it does take a shift to realise that Australian uni culture isn’t about that.

“It is a really big thing to come all the way to Australia for uni. I wanted to give myself a Plan B, so I’ve still got my place at Exeter Uni at the moment. I deferred my place at Exeter on A-level results day and kept it for September 2026. I did that so that if when I got here I hated it, I would have somewhere to go in the UK and this would be just like doing a gap year. I’m going to decline it now, but it was helpful to know I had an insurance policy.

“When you arrive you’ve got to be able to talk to everyone and to really try and make an effort, all the time. For the first month I literally had to speak to everyone in every lift, every queue, every everything. You’ve got to be out there and proactive.

“Another thing is you’ve got to be aware of is that you can’t speak to someone at home before 4.30 in the afternoon. And if you’re trying to do your washing at 11am, you’re probably going to shrink your clothes, or have some small domestic disaster that you’d like some advice on, you’re just going to have to sort it out yourself because everybody’s asleep in the UK.

“Arriving at university I don’t think anyone should expect to have it all figured out and everything going swimmingly quickly. That’s just not the case for most people, I think, it takes time. I’ve only felt properly settled for the last few weeks.

“The other thing I had to deal with – which is very specific to Jersey people – was that I had to get an Aussie ID because my ID kept getting declined for being fake. Because it was from Jersey, and none of the club bouncers thought it was a real place. I’d spend like 10 minutes trying to get into a club, getting Google Maps up, trying to show them that Jersey really does exist!”