Life at ANU and in Canberra: What to Expect

By Lily Amos, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Coming to ANU as an exchange student, there is quite a lot to get your head around — a new city, a new campus, a new academic system. Here is what I wish someone had told me before I arrived.

Read more: Life at ANU and in Canberra: What to Expect

Courses and Academics

ANU runs on a major and minor system, which means that as an exchange student, you may (depending on your course) have a lot more freedom to explore subject areas outside your home degree than you might expect. For me, studying Politics and International Relations, this has been one of the best parts of the whole experience. I’ve taken classics courses (an easy choice, given my longstanding obsession with the ancient world); a demography of sex and gender course that will feed directly into my dissertation next year; an indigenous history course; a course on postcolonial predicaments in Southeast Asia, and courses in humanitarianism and security studies. ANU has a dedicated Department of International Relations and a separate Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, both of which are worth knowing about if that’s your area, and the School for Indigenous Studies and the School for Asia and the Pacific offer some incredible courses which would be difficult to find in such specificity at Manchester due to regional differences/priorities, so definitely consider enrolling on those.

You’ll take four modules per semester, each with more frequent assignments than the Manchester model, which takes some adjustment, but sets you up for consistent engagement, which will be incredibly useful for maximising your final year at Manchester. The format is also different: many of my classes run as two-hour “lectorials” — interactive lecture-style sessions — followed by a one-hour seminar. As someone with ADHD, I’ve actually found this more engaging than a traditional lecture, though I won’t pretend the three-hour blocks aren’t sometimes long. I have twelve in-person contact hours a week, three per course, and I designed my timetable to run Monday to Wednesday, which has given me long weekends to actually make the most of being in Australia. You can plan your own timetable, so I’d highly recommend being strategic about it.

Campus

ANU’s campus is enormous — much bigger than Manchester’s, despite the university having roughly half the number of students — and a significant part of what makes it feel so different is how much green space runs through it. It’s leafy, open, and beautiful in a way that takes you slightly by surprise if you’re arriving from a city-centre university. There are hills, wide paths, native trees, wildlife (you may even see a kangaroo if you’re walking to class in the morning or evening), and enough space that it never feels crowded even when it’s busy. It’s designed to be social in a way that makes a real difference to daily life, and it is a genuinely lovely place to be.

The centrepiece is Kambri, a space at the heart of campus surrounded by shops, cafes, and restaurants with global cuisines ranging from Japanese to well, a Subway. Beyond Kambri, the campus also has a minimart, a merch shop, a hairdresser, a pub, an arcade, a pharmacy and GP, two gyms, a swimming pool, a bicycle repair shop, and a row of eateries along Joplin Lane. There are so many third places — spots to sit, eat, study, or just exist without any particular agenda — that the campus genuinely functions as a small self-contained town. A lot of students live in on-campus accommodation too, which makes it an unusually social environment; there’s always something going on and always people around.

The campus also has its own classics museum, which is free to visit and well worth an hour of your time — it holds a collection of Ancient Greek and Roman artefacts including amphorae, alongside indigenous Australian items. For anyone with an interest in the ancient world or in Australian history, it’s a lovely thing to have on your doorstep to have a nose at, and there is a study space attached.

One thing worth knowing is that ANU has fewer societies than Manchester, so if you’re attached to the enormous students’ union with dozens of options, it can feel quieter on that front. That said, some of what’s available is genuinely exceptional — and specifically exceptional to Canberra in a way you couldn’t replicate anywhere else in Australia. The International Relations Society has been a highlight for me: through it I’ve had the opportunity to visit embassies and meet politicians and people working across the political sphere, which is the kind of access that simply wouldn’t be available on this scale in Manchester. The fact that Canberra is Australia’s political capital makes it uniquely placed for this, and if you’re a politics student, it’s absolutely worth getting involved. If you do need anything the campus doesn’t offer beyond all of this, the city centre is only a ten to fifteen minute walk away.

Life in Canberra

Canberra is a planned city, and it looks like one — wide roads, lots of open space, everything very deliberately placed — but there’s a warmth and a livability to it that the top-down design doesn’t really convey. It’s surrounded by mountains, which are visible from much of the city and give it a dramatic backdrop, especially in the early morning. The lake runs through the centre of it all, with walking and cycling paths along the foreshore that are lovely on a sunny afternoon.

The national institutions are all free to enter and genuinely worth your time — the National Gallery, the National Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and Parliament House are all within an easy walk or bus ride of campus. The Botanic Gardens are beautiful and often underrated as a place to spend an afternoon. For day-to-day life, the Canberra Centre has everything you’d need — Coles, Big W, Sephora, Cotton On, and more. Braddon is the neighbourhood to know for eating and socialising, with an impressive concentration of independent eateries, coffee shops, and pubs packed into a relatively small area. It has a really lovely atmosphere, especially on a weekend evening, and is well worth making your regular haunt.

Getting Around and Travelling

Canberra has an airport, though it’s small and doesn’t fly everywhere. Domestically, you can reach Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne in under two hours, which makes spontaneous weekend trips very manageable. You can also fly direct to Fiji, which is only around five hours and surprisingly affordable — easily one of the better travel options available to you if you want to make the most of being in the region.

For getting to Sydney specifically, the coach is often just as practical. The coach terminal in the city centre is very close to campus, and both Flixbus and Murrays run regular, affordable services to Sydney Airport and Sydney city centre, taking around three to three and a half hours. I tend to get an early coach, fall asleep, and arrive feeling like no time has passed at all. Coaches to Melbourne are also available, but at nine to eleven hours it’s worth weighing up whether a flight might make more sense depending on your budget and timing.