My plan going to Australia was, well essentially no plan. When someone else is paying for your flights, you may as well go to the furthest away place possible (big up student finance I suppose). I think I’m one of those weird cases who wasn’t scared at all to take my first ever long-haul, solo flight to literally the furthest away country in the world. I left my family quickly, felt the familiar fear of airport security, and then slumped myself down on a chair like it was any other journey from London to Notts.
OK, I admit I may be overexaggerating my bravery just a tad, I was far less blasé about the whole thing but honestly I went into it pretty confidently, and looking back I wasn’t wrong to. So much anxiety taints good experiences, but this was a fresh start in a country full of fresh faces, I knew that even if it went wrong it was only temporary and I could leave once again and never come back (OBVIOUSLY this later turned out to be a much more sorrowful goodbye, but I was thinking worst case scenario here).
I was part of a 600+ group of exchange students at Melbourne University for this semester alone, so despite a couple days of being lost and alone in a big city speaking to close to no one, suddenly I was thrust into meeting more people from all over the world than I ever have in my life. Honestly I reckon I’ve made more friends from other parts of the world than I have from Australia itself, but this was the biggest blessing and I feel so grateful for all the people from all walks of life I met.
I don’t think I realised before I left just how small my world actually was, and travelling so far completely on my own showed me just how infinite it is, and how easy it is to just up, leave, and completely change your life and perspective.
Studying at Melbourne Uni (which has since been rated 14th in the world) I will say it was not too far off from the university experience I’m used to, so I didn’t change the way I studied too much and could focus on enjoying the experience. Australian universities do their university a little different to the UK wherein every student is required to do ‘breadth’ subjects (think the creative, sociological and global subjects that may not specifically link to any one subject you may do), and these breadth subjects were mainly the ones available to exchange students.
Since I was here for a good time, not a long time, I thought I’d go for the subjects that seemed the most interesting and stress-free (I was not going to stress myself out with exams if I did not have to). The subjects I took were pop culture; from K-pop to selfies, Australian art history, street art and the politics of sex. A very random mix which is so very me.
I won’t say it was easy, of course not, Melbourne uni is one of the best in the country and the way my semester worked these grades do still count to my final degree, but I certainly won’t complain about finding myself studying in Cairns, Bali and the Gold Coast beside beaches, pools and sunshine.
My first venture out of Melbourne was with my sister to Cairns, which involved lots of snorkelling over the Great Barrier Reef, visiting the Daintree rainforest (the oldest rainforest in the world) and seeing about 6 waterfalls in a day. For almost the entire trip we weren’t allowed to swim in the sea because of jellyfish stingers and crocodiles (but the photo above shows someone with clearly no care for rules who went straight in as soon as the lifeguards were gone, this was in the stinger net but we were told even this was too dangerous at the time).
Further context for what we encountered on out trip, this photo is in a lake where they knew there was *one* crocodile, who’d been released by someone who didn’t want it anymore, so they just left it to live the rest of its life in this lake. Endless dark lake beneath you is not scary at all.
This was my first time visiting somewhere tropical and I must say I loved it, although it was so hot and sticky we were secretly quite excited to return to the slight chill of Melbourne.
When I first arrived to Melbourne it was still summer, which was a beautiful contrast from February in England. Needless to say as someone used to the weather in the UK, everything I’d heard of the weather in Melbourne was wildly over-exaggerated and I’d say anyone who considered Melbourne winter a bad one would have an undeniably awful time in England over winter. Clearly weather was as big of a talking point there as it is at home though; someone said to me that if you’re not enjoying the weather, just wait 15 minutes and it’ll change, which I’d say is a very well-known experience in the UK.
Unlike most of the travellers I met in Australia, I wasn’t able to do the traditional travel route along the east coast, so my next stop was to Bali, Indonesia with my brother. Seeing both my brother and sister while I was away definitely helped keep the home sickness at bay and I can’t say it wasn’t nice to spend some time with more familiar faces.
Bali was incredible; my first time in Asia, good food, the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed in in my life, Komodo dragons, a gorgeous tan, a near death experience, and the most stunning blue-water beaches I’ve ever seen.
Going to Asia on my own seemed a little more of an intimidating experience, so I’m very glad I got to do it with my brother for my first excursion, but the whole experience has definitely excited the travel bug inside me. I’m actually in the process of planning a bit of a longer trip to Asia, including a visit to Thailand to see my flatmate who I stayed with in Melbourne.
Throughout the semester there were other little excursions in and around Melbourne. I camped along Great Ocean road with two friends from Canada and one from the US. This is another one of my highlights and also the first time I saw a koala in the wild! Although we went on the cusp of winter we decided to brave camping and it was so worth it for the experience.
Once the semester ended I visited Surfer’s paradise, Sydney, Tasmania, Uluru, Alice Springs, the Blue Mountains and Byron Bay to end off my trip.
Travelling to Tasmania and the Northern Territory was so eye-opening to the reality of how little we are taught in schools in the UK about Australia’s history of colonisation. At the start of every lecture, in most public buildings and most websites there was an acknowledgement of land, acknowledging the history of colonisation, and the fact that the land is owned by Indigenous people.
On a tour which gave us three days of bush camping in swags (a swag is barely a tent but surprisingly kept us warm enough, reckon I’d struggle to spend longer than the three nights we spent in them though), it was an unreal experience to walk among land that felt so connected to it’s history. Indigenous elders share stories about Uluru, keeping other large landmarks like King’s Canyon and the Valley of the Winds under wraps in terms of how much of the sacred stories they share. In only 2019, climbing Uluru was banned which seems unreal, since Indigenous people were asking tourists not to claim this sacred site for decades.
Living amongst the desert for a few days, I’d never felt so connected to the world through the eyes of someone so different from myself. Within this place, from flying over it to being amongst, it you are struck by the nothingness; for miles and miles, it is dry and uninhabited, and feels completely natural and real.
Being alone in a massive country, albeit terrifying, I won’t deny there was a small, claustrophobic fear of loneliness but this appeared entirely dwarfed next to the grandeur of isolation and solitude amongst the whole world. What began as a place where I knew no one, ended as a place of quick-made lifelong connections and many sad goodbyes.
I ended my six months with five days by the sea in Byron Bay, the chilled-out surfer capital of Australia, and although it did rain a few times, I got in a few more days of sun and swimming, and seeing whales up close!
It felt like such a meaningful conclusion and let me reminisce on all that I’d seen while in Australia, while saying goodbye to everyone I’d met there. Spending my last few weeks properly travelling, staying hostels was so much fun and such a valuable addition to simply being abroad.
I think leaving Australia was so much harder than leaving home to go there; when I left home I knew I’d always come back, and I knew when, but when I left Australia I knew I may never come back and if I was it wouldn’t be for a very long time (I have so many other places in the world I want to see!), but I’ve made friends who are now scattered all over the world, and I’ve realised how many more people and experiences there are in the world left for me to have.
Hannah studied at University of Melbourne for Spring semester of 2022/2023 academic year
uonstudyabroad.com 
Leave a comment