In June 2004 I moved from Switzerland to Sydney (Australia) to start my new job as a researcher at NICTA/UNSW. With such a cross-continental move, many things change and one spends quite some time to find out about how to do the daily business and organise life in an unknown city. This page intends to help people in a similar situation during their first weeks in Sydney, and in particular at NICTA/UNSW. I intentionally tried to keep it brief, giving only the most important information and providing some links, from where you can find out more by yourself.
This page has the following sections:
At some major bus stops (like Bondi Junction or Circular Quay) and near the shop in Mathews Arcade (UNSW Kensington campus) you will find maps of the eastern suburbs, which are quite helpful for orientation in Sydney's eastern suburbs. You can also download the map as a PDF (1.2 MByte).
Campus maps of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) help you to find certain places on the campus.
To locate a specific address (in almost all of Australia), use Google maps.
There are lots of buses in Sydney and also the railway (subway). You will find all related information on their respective homepages: Sydney Buses and CityRail.
You can download a network map of the Sydney buses from Regional Maps & Guides webpage. The map is also quite useful for general orientation in Sydney. If you don't know which region to choose, try the eastern region which contains UNSW. You can find a printed version of the map at major bus stops and "Matthews Arcade" on the UNSW campus (the arcade is the covered area with some food take aways and shops located at coordinate E24 on the campus map).
There are also online maps of CityRail network.
A brief summary on the tickets to get you started: You can buy most tickets in the buses, at the train stations and at quite a few shops throughout the city (small shops, kiosks and tabacconists). The most important ticket categories during your first few weeks are most likely the following:
Weekly travelpass: Allows you to travel in a large area of the city, especially all the eastern suburbs and the business district. There are two useful types of travelpasses (there are more for longer distances): The red one, which includes buses, ferries and CityRail (subway) for $33 per week, and the blue one which includes buses and ferries (but not the CityRail trains) for $31 per week.
The weekly Travelpass is probably best used for the very first week(s) of your stay, during which you explore the city and visit different suburbs while looking for a place to stay.
Travelten: Allows you to do 10 individual bus rides and are significantly cheaper than 10 single tickets. There are many different colors depending on the number of sections you travel: Blue for up to 2 sections, brown for 3-5 sections (e.g. Kingsford to City), red for 6-9 sections and so on. You can find the sections for each bus line on the printed timetables page.
The Travelten ist most useful for frequent short trips or infrequent longer trips, e.g. if you live within ten minutes by bus to the university, rarely go to the city and want to spend less money than for the full Travelpass.
There is a care-sharing network available in some areas of Sydney: GoGet. It started around Newtown, but many new areas got coverage recently. This service is interesting if you need a care on rare occasions.
This section was contributed by Sergio Ruocco in 2004, with some additions by myself.
You will find nearly every announce in these three websites, often with photos. They include all those in the Sydney Morning Herald (minus the personal and marginal ones, maybe), but they complete, free and easy to check:
Most of these sites allow you to enter search criterias such as suburb, rent or sale, price. Some even allow you to get mails when a new property matching your search criteria pops up, or show you only the most recent additions to the database.
The advertised price is often indicative, the real rent price can be negotiated. It seems to me that the market of apartments for rent it's a "buyer market". Moreover, I felt that there seems to be a some irregular/unreliable tenants, so the landlord is likely to sacrifice some money but have a reliable and safe tenants. Like with the bank, you can play your "University/NICTA" card.
Sometimes you find properties on different websites with different prices.
To find modern, european-style aparments (IKEA-catalog style), look for these keywords: "ultra-modern, fully-renovated, new, stainless-steel or SMEG-appliances, granite top bench, security building". If more than two of them are missing, be suspicius, if many of them are missing, usually the place is bad.
Tiled floor are very rare, the norm are carpets everywere, except bathroom and kitchen. Alternative are [timber] polished floor, that mean solid wood, or parquet floor, both much nicer than carpets, at least from my (italian) POV.
Usually the kitchen is "open" in the living room, and the living room is NOT counted in the room count. So, 1 bedroom means really 1 bedroom, beside the living+kitchen room and bathroom. Many bathrooms have really small basins, and/or no windows, at least in the 1-bedroom apartments which I saw.
Kings Cross is the Sydney's "Amsterdam Red Quarter". You will find by yourself that the prices there are nearly half of other parts of the city. People told me that also Redfern is not a good place to go around in the night.
Note: This section was written from the point of view of someone wroking at UNSW, hence the focus on suburbs in the east.
Walking distance from UNSW: Kensington, Randwick, Kingsford, Daceyville.
10'-20' by Bus: Bondi Junction, Coogee, Waverley, areas around the City centre and Maroubra Junction.
Bondi Junction, and the City centre are very nice places to live, with plenty of life and light in the streets in the night, many shops and supermarkets, and main bus/metro-train stations interchanges. I (Sergio) live in Surry Hills, I like it, but also Darlinghurst is a good area, and Coogee is very close to the beach (but houses are ugly and/or pricey).
Maroubra is more to the south, but offers reasonable prices. Maroubra Junction is where I (Felix) live now, which is nice, close to the UNSW, but a bit further from the beaches than Maroubra, and already about 30 bus minutes from the city.
There are three ways to inspect a property: Some agents list times during which you can inspect the property (often on saturday mornings), other arrange a time to show you the property, and others give you the keys for 1 hour (and a deposit of $50).
Even though some of the above real-estate sites offer the possibility to contact an agent by e-mail, it is better to give them a phone call.
Although leases are usually listed in dollars per week, sometimes the lease has to be paid every month (ask the agent if you prefer to pay every two or four weeks when you get your salary). The formula to calculate the montly rent according to the Office of Fair Trading is: Weekly rent devided by 7, times the number of days in the year, divided by 12. For one of my (Felix) tenancies, the agent and the owner used other, different formulas which resulted in slightly different monthly rents and thus chaos and trouble.
Obviously, you will need some sort of banking solution to handle your money. In my case, I did not evaluate the different banks. I just took the one that was suggested to me (I have been told that the services of the different banks are quite similar anyway). This section is just a description of experiences, not an advertisement.
On my first day at NICTA, I opened an account with ANZ. Opening an account on your first day has the advantage that you can receive your first salary (which is payd every two weeks) and probably a part of your travel expenses soon afterwards. This way you get australian dollars withouth having to import them.
ANZ has a branch right in the middle of the campus (approx. coordinate F14 on the campus map). To open an account, you will need at least two documents of identification (like passport, ID, driving licence). If you can prove that you are a member of staff (or student), your account will be without fees.
The types of accounts and the interest is handled different from what I was used to in Switzerland. Therefore I will give a short summary which might help you to setup you banking needs quickly:
My suggestion is to open at least an access account so you can start to receive money (salary, expenses, transfer from abroad) and use the ANZ card to get cash from the ATM or pay electronically (EFTPOS) in stores.
Online banking: If you ask for online banking, you will have to type your new password in a computer at the ANZ branch. That password together with your customer number is the only security (no one-time pad, challenge-response scheme or similar enhanced security), so choose your password wisely! With the default online banking, you can only see what's going on in your accounts, you can not do any payments. For that, you will have to apply for "Pay anyone".
Transfers from abroad: For transfers from abroad you usually need the BSB number and your account number. I had to pay about $7 to transfer some money (for the bonds and initial rents) from Switzerland.
This paragraph is contributed by Andrew Baumann.
Banking is similar with the other banks, there is also a branch of the Commonwealth Bank on campus (behind the post office). Most of them offer very poor returns on normal access/savings accounts, I suggest opening an ING direct account as well as your normal bank account, which has a high variable interest rate (currently 5.25%). This is linked to your normal account (you can only transfer to/from your normal account, not anywhere else) and accessed via online banking only (no physical branches). Also, if you can get a fee-free credit card they are handy, I'm not sure how difficult that is without much credit history in Australia.
This section is contributed by Stefan M. Petters
If you have kids who don't go to school yet there are two major possibilities to find a place to go to.
One are the playgoups which are organised and directed by mothers. That means you have to stay during the sessions (2 hours several days during the week) and take care what your child is up to. You also have to pay a small fee ($ 2-3) everytime you attend and bring a piece of fruit. There is also the requirement to pay a yearly fee of $30 to be covered insurance wise. You also have to help during the sessions to prepare the snack or set up any activities. Usually the first time you visit a playgroup you don't have to pay. My advice is to go at least to two different ones and take a look. There are also some churches who offer this kind of "child care" and often you dont' have to pay the $30 fee there. Information about playgroups, where they are and how often they are held you can find here.
The other possibility you've got are the day care centres or pre-schools. The kids can go on there own from 0 to 5 years. Then they start school anyway. Off course that is not for free. Fees start from $45 to $60 for a complete day (ca. 7.30 - 18.30) including morning tea. lunch and afternoon tea. It is not easy to get a place. And there is a lot of variety in terms of e.g. religion, Steiner, Montessori, and other cultural backgrounds. Often the centres are connected to work and are subsidised and you can get a cheaper fee. Check this out with your employer. In this case, you can also pay by "salary sacrifice", which means that the fees will be directly taken from your salary before tax is deducted. However, if you are permanent resident (see below), then you can get alternatively child care benefit. You have to do the numbers and see which of the two is better for your specific case. To get a list of centres visit your local city council website or physicly go to the council. They should be able to provide you with a copy. The next step is now to ring them. Some of them have a waiting list up to two years!! Good Luck.
If you have kids, permanent residency is definitely prefereable. Try to get things started before you even arrive here: dig out medical checks, all documents like marriage certificate, birth certificats etc. and avoid putting them in the continer going down here. If you need to do the medical checks for the business class visa (which you will likely do as the permanent residency takes time), add the little extra and do the full checks necessary, which may then be reused for the permament residency application (within a few months). The problem of the business class visa is that you don't receive any support for child care centers and you will have to pay a serious fee for sending your kids to school (was around AUD $ 4,000 + handling fees in 2005). Anyway, this can send you seriously into the backfoot. Support from state regarding kids is limited though. Starting around AUD $ 96,000 the support is cut (child care support is still granted).
All visa information is available from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (it changes its name every year, in the past it used to be DIMIA, then DIMA).
Of course, many sites can be found with the help of Google Australia or simply guessed. I will list a few sites anyway (in addition to the ones embedded in the text above), which might be useful:
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Last change: 5 December 2007