Brisbane as an exchange student

Szlia said:

A friend of mine will be spending the better part of a year in Brisbane as an exchange student (17 year old). Obviously she will have some classmates to guide her around, but I thought I could ask around here too for some Aussie wisdom beforehand.

My only guess is: be sure to use sunscreen because of the size of the ozone layer hole over Antarctica, but then again I saw on Google Map that Australia is nowhere near as south as I thought it was (central Europe is a lot more north than Australia is south much to my surprise).

I've seen @mewkus is a still active user who posted a few year back in a similar thread. Any other australians around?

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Hi Szlia, I'm from just south of Brisbane - Gold Coast. Sorry I didn't see your thread earlier as I don't come into the travel section much at all.

I can try to answer questions, but in truth I'm not too sure how much advice I could give to a 17 yr old girl. . . . Summer gets crazy hot and very humid, drink lots of water, and even at night in summer it is still hot.

Which lead us to have a car culture, everyone prefers sitting in a car with AC . . . so traffic can be really bad. . . if you want to park in the CBD it's going to cost a lot.

Oh yeah and that Ozone layer hole is down over Antarctica, the high skin cancer rates is due to the beach / outdoors lifestyle we have all year.

I also lived on the Gold Coast for around 5 years. It's a very nice area, Brisbane is pretty good as far as major cities go. Sunscreen is always a good idea if you're as pale as me.

There is a very active lifestyle in Brisbane so if she likes playing sports or going to the beach then it's a good place to be. Hard to provide specific advice without knowing what she is into but Brisbane is pretty safe, has good social scene, bars, nightclubs.. It's a not very long drive from there to either sunshine coast or gold coast which are wonderful tourist/beach/holiday areas.

If she's as dumb as the average Australian teenager she'll definitely want to go down to the gold coast for schoolies week, mix some pills and alcohol, pass out, then wake up in hospital wondering where she left her underwear.

What are the odds OP is in love with this 17 year old and he'll be sending her harassing Facebook messages and commenting on photos of her out in Brisbane with her friends with "Have fun! But not TOO much fun "

Beach life is huge up that way, I'm a mexicunt so not so big down here.
There is a good Rock Climbing scene in Brissy, Lots of MTB riding in the area although you need to travel for it.
I thought the night life sucked when I was there, but I was a lot younger ... back in my day!....
If she is into water sports, surfing/paddle boarding etc, she will have heaps to do.

DON'T SWIN IN BRISBANE RIVER..... Bull Sharks are always cruising in the river ... Yes everything wants to kill you in Australia, you've heard the stories.
Make sure she gets North to the Great Barrier Reef, it's dying and won't be there for much longer... See it while you can.

Also lets just add that the age of consent in Australia is 16 for females . . .

Brisbane is so far south it makes my brain hurt when people say it's hot there. Us Territorians aren't very supportive of Queenslanders from Brisbane, because they might as well be living in Sydney.

Number one rule of travel in Australia (or anywhere really). Don't be stupid.

Kinda off topic, but if I'm looking for great weather, fun nightlife (working professional), water sports/beaches, and a general fun/friendly environment what city or area would you guess recommend in Australia?

Sounding like somewhere on the Gold Coast so far... how's Sydney though? Better?

Oh and somewhere where I don't have to worry too much about the wildlife trying to kill me. I know it's Australia, so I understand that limits my options

kegkilla said:

Atlantic City

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I've been to Atlantic City. I found none of the things I mentioned there. Unless you count the homeless as dangerous wildlife, which I generally do.

Arden said:

Kinda off topic, but if I'm looking for great weather, fun nightlife (working professional), water sports/beaches, and a general fun/friendly environment what city or area would you guess recommend in Australia?

Sounding like somewhere on the Gold Coast so far... how's Sydney though? Better?

Oh and somewhere where I don't have to worry too much about the wildlife trying to kill me. I know it's Australia, so I understand that limits my options

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Yeah you're probably right in picking the Gold Coast, Sydney is good, it is a big city so has all the good and bad that comes with that. The Gold Coast has a large tourist industry and all the related hospitality, restaurants and nightclubs, it is the main tourist destination in Australia.

Sydney has colder winters, the Gold Coast has nearly year round beach weather - you can get a cold rainy weekend every now and then over 'winter' here but nothing that lasts too long.

Oh and the wildlife thing, if you're in any urban / built up area, things are fine. If you're swimming, there are a few fatal shark attacks across the entire country each year. Which makes the news yes, but is a low figure when you look at the reality of how many people are swimming, almost year round.

Gamma Rays said:

Yeah you're probably right in picking the Gold Coast, Sydney is good, it is a big city so has all the good and bad that comes with that. The Gold Coast has a large tourist industry and all the related hospitality, restaurants and nightclubs, it is the main tourist destination in Australia.

Sydney has colder winters, the Gold Coast has nearly year round beach weather - you can get a cold rainy weekend every now and then over 'winter' here but nothing that lasts too long.

Oh and the wildlife thing, if you're in any urban / built up area, things are fine. If you're swimming, there are a few fatal shark attacks across the entire country each year. Which makes the news yes, but is a low figure when you look at the reality of how many people are swimming, almost year round.

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Yeah from what I understand getting eaten off the coast of Australia is more likely than a lot of places but you'd still have to have pretty bad luck. I've also heard that the actual shark attack rate is lower than other places overall, but the fatality rate is a little bit higher because the sharks that actually attack you tend to be big enough to bite you in half.

Any particular places or specific towns on the Gold Coast that you would recommend?

Arden said:

Any particular places or specific towns on the Gold Coast that you would recommend?

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Sorry for the slow reply.

Anyways as far as where to live, there's no really bad places, there is one area that did get a number of housing commission houses built in it = Silver Bridle, lower economic income families and people who don't care about their property as it was given to them. There's likely to be other housing commission pockets in other parts of the Gold Coast but that's the one I know as it's in my local area.

Around the coast there's been an odd pattern of development, sometimes it's happened in little spots here and there, so you can have impressive expensive MacMansions in one part of a street and then just a short distance down, are some older run-down places. So good or bad would more depend of what kind of neighbors you end up with.

There are some areas where the one company has built a housing development on the one piece of land, some are nice. With others they've tried to get too many houses in the area and they are built right next to each other.
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Okay so trying to think of an important detail to consider when choosing where to live. Traffic issues.

To explain: Due to strong population growth, the place has more and more cars and the traffic can really get bad at times. One of the main roads I drive home on in the afternoon, I get a good run, but the people going the other way are bumper to bumper and moving at a crawl. That's a normal day, if there's some kind of incident it can almost come to a stop.

So if you can find where you're working / plus where you want to spend time. Then try to find somewhere near to it.