Majoring in microadventures: ‘Study’ abroad life on Australia’s East Coast

By Meg Luddington (University of Sydney, Australia)

Undoubtedly one of the things that made my semester studying in Sydney so memorable was time spent… not in Sydney. Don’t get me wrong, it is an incredible city, and I do not intent do convince you that you should spend your time there trying to leave, but I made the best memories when seeing what the rest of Australia has to offer on weekend ‘microadventures’ with friends.

A semester abroad is the perfect time to test the balance of work/study and life. And what better place to do that than Australia’s East coast. Here are some of my favourite mid-term weekend trips.

A note on costs: Car hire can be relatively cheap with a few friends, and the cheapest accommodation option is definitely camping. Kmart (Australia’s cheaper version of Ikea) sells 2 man or 3 man tents for $13, (equivalent of £6), and roll mats for $8 (£4). They served me and my friends for all of the trips mentioned, throughout the semester. Australia does a great trade in free public barbeques, both at campsites and …pretty much anywhere you might want them; buying cooking equipment, if you plan carefully, is not necessary.

Mungo: a slightly less conventional choice for the study abroader in Sydney, but possibly my favourite of all the weekend trips I took, Mungo National Park is a long dried up, fossilised lakebed 10 hours’ drive west of Sydney. The place itself is amazing, remote, and incredibly historically significant, two 40,000 year old aboriginal skeletons having been discovered there in recent years.

It is also an extremely fun road trip, if you can manage to hire a 4×4 (as the roads are not all sealed)! Here are my friends with an echidna we found on one such road:

Make sure to be well prepared though, as in the outback shops and drinking water taps are few and far between, and in Australia’s winter the nights can get quite cold. The sunsets in the outback are so worth it though!

Palm beach: The most northern of Syndey’s Northern beaches, Palm beach, popularised by the Australian soap ‘Home and Away’, boasts a long peninsula with two perfect golden sandy beaches on each side.

Since it is reachable from Sydney by public transport, it could definitely be done as a day trip, but I really enjoyed camping with two friends at the Basin campground, just a short ferry across Pittwater inlet. We hiked up the northern headland to the lighthouse, and spent some time swimming, and enjoyed wallabies and monitor lizards at the campsite.

Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road: If studying in Syndey, it is a must to visit Melbourne. I found it had a much more European city vibe than Sydney and felt more artsy… probably because the Melbourne comedy festival happened to be on when I visited. I have an obvious winner (having spent 6 happy months there), but I will let you make up your mind on which deserved to be crowned Australia’s ‘capital’ over of Canberra! It is most easily reachable by domestic flight from Sydney, and if you make the treck, be sure to experience the Great Ocean Road, which takes you South from Melbourne to the ‘Shipwereck coast’, and the twelve apostles. This was on my bucket list, and the highlight of the trip.

Jervis Bay: I visited Jervis Bay in April with four friends, at the tail end of New South Wales’s summer, arguably a perfect time as it was still warm, and we had the white sandy beaches and turquoise sea pretty much to ourselves. 

These were some of my favourites, but I also went to The Blue mountains (just a few hours train ride from Sydney’s CBD), on a trip with the university module ‘Learning and Outdoor education’, and made loads of new friends.

Camping on one mile beach and visiting Tomaree national park was another great weekend trip.

I also loved hiring out a big air BnB with a group of friends in the hunter valley wine region for a wine tasting weekend.

I encourage you to make full use of uni holidays to explore further afield but I cannot recommend weekend trips enough. They broke up the routine of studying and reminded me to make the most of every moment I had abroad, in such a beautiful country. You might even catch a glimpse of the much feared wildlife that is disappointingly elusive in Sydney!