<p>If you could live and work in either city for a year, which would you choose? I am very torn between the two. I feel like I know more about Melbourne, but Western Australia seems beautiful. Has anyone been there?</p>
<p>How old are you? What do you want to get out of the year?</p>
<p>If you want to pursue outdoor sports or business oppourtunities, Perth is the city to beat.</p>
<p>If you want to experience the arty, multi-cultural side of Australasia, then Melbourne is the best option. University of Melbourne is one fo the top unis in Australasia.</p>
<p>I’m 20. I want to take a bit of time off from college and travel/possibly work. Not so interested in business opportunities, but I love outdoor sports/swimming/etc.</p>
<p>Perth is very nice but one of the most isolated cities in the world. Though most maps are not to scale, the state of western Australia is so big the whole of Europe could fit inside it and rattle around with space to spare. 99% of that space is baked red desert. Everyone knows about the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, but north of Perth there is the Ningaloo reef which is just as amazing but with only a fraction of the visitors. This is my favourite place to visit in WA. You can swim with whale sharks (no teeth! They won’t eat you. Though pretty much all the wildlife in Oz can kill you. Even the cute platypus has poisonous spurs!)</p>
<p>I used to live in Melbourne and don’t know Perth that well so my opinion is not unbiased. Melbourne does not have such a great climate. In the summer (January) is it as hot as hell. In the winter it rains and there is occasional frost (and all Australians think they’re going to die). Sydney has a much nicer always-mildy-warm climate in my opinion. Melbourne is much bigger and more diverse than Perth. It also has good transport. I highly recommed the little visited Sapphire Coast between Sydney and Australia. Again, little visited but just as lovely, and full of amazing wildlife.</p>
<p>I think it is highly unlikely that you will go to Australia and stay in one place for a year. I live in the UK, where is always appears that half the student population has spent a ‘year out’ in Australia. You can get a temporary work visa (which lasts a year for the Brits but the rules for other countries are different) and spend time working (bars, waitressing, picking bananas from trees full of huge poisonous spiders etc) and when you have enough money move on to the next place. Google some thing like “gap year Australia”. UK people use often BUNAC.</p>
<p>I assume I’ll want to travel as much as possible in such an enormous country (and I expect it to be quite inconvenient or too expensive at times) but I expect to have a base, or at the very least, a place to start out. Thank you for your advice, I had contacted BUNAC before, I think I might go with them.</p>
<p>When I saw this, I promptly called my son and said “are you posting on College COnfidential”? He spent two weeks in Perth last January and then tried to figure out if he could move there permanently. He loved it. Adventures, good SCUBA diving, exciting vibrant young city. He said the diving wasn’t so good in Melbourne. (My father lived in Melbourne in 1943 and said it was “staid.” His second wife–my mom was #3 (and last)–was from Melbourne.)</p>
<p>My son also mentioned that just about everyone he met had a second job off the books, for cash, if you wanted to work while traveling. Not that I’d recommend doing something that’s illegal.</p>
<p>I love Perth, and Freemantle, but personally, I’d prefer living in Sydney.<br>
Or at least someplace that is on the east side of Australia. There are a lot of cities on that side, many places to go, lots to see on the east coast.</p>
<p>Also, it will be easier/quicker for your family to come visit if you are in Melbourne or someplace on the east coast. And they should definitely come to visit.</p>
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<p>It’s really too big to have a “base” which you keep going back to. I mean if you are based in Melbourne and go to Sydney, it’s a 15 hour+ drive back. Perth in my opinion is far, far too isolated to function as a base for travelling round Australia. Start out there and move round in a clockwise direction so you go across the “top end” first, and back down through Queensland to NSW and finally Victoria. Then you can fly home from Melbourne or Sydney. (NB I have flown LA->Auckland ->Sydney twice and it is the turbulent flight from hell. Perhaps because it is over the ocean the whole way? Would never do it again. Whole flight was vomitting for 12 hours!)</p>
<p>Melbourne is cold for Australia. The whole south coast is. No tropical reefs where it isn’t tropical, obviously. Not surprised that Melbourne was “staid” in 1943, being that it was in the middle of a war and isolated across 1000s of miles of ocean before air travel became cheap, reliable and common. I suspect things have changed in the last 64 years. The modern world exists outside America you know.</p>
<p>I’d prefer Sydney or Brisbane myself. Much more to do and closer to other cities if you need a change of pace.</p>
<p>Cupcake: actually, during WWII, Melbourne was MacArthur’s headquarters… and thus pretty exciting for a young journalist (my father was a 35-year-old war correspondent, attached to MacArthur’s staff by the UPI–he ultimately followed MacArthur all the way to the surrender on Missouri, including flying with him in his helicopter to the surrender). He was considered quite the rake because he was having an affair with an Australian general’s daughter (whom he later married)… he thought Washington, DC was “staid” too. Same time frame. And of course things have changed since then (which is why I gave the year)… but still Melbourne is considered a “family town” in Australia and Sydney is considered pretty hip.</p>
<p>That info is dated, dmd. Sydney is the staid city, Melbourne is the hipper, arty city of Australasia. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend Sydney to any 20 something. It has one of the most stunning urban locations in the world, but the atmosphere is so…quiet. It looks a little like New York but has none of the energy (except Bondi–if you love the water you might consider hanging out in Bondi for a while–but it is annoying because it isn’t connected by subway). Brisbane and Melbourne are more energetic and multiclutural. I would expect Perth to be similar to Tampa–a newish boom city with suburban roots. It is dominated by the ore trades which means that it has a substantial blue collar population–which earns $125K a year in mining.</p>
<p>unreg, take cupcake’s advice and plan out a tour of Australia/NZ. You’ll be surrounded by a couple of hundred backpackers doing approx the same thing.
Book into hostels and see if you can’t find a travelling mate or two. Together you can buy a car (and a surfboard and a kayak?) in both countries (be sure to leave enough time to sell stuff at the end). Sign up online to get guest worker’s visas–at your age you’ll get instant approval. You will be able to pick up work without any trouble–in any city.</p>
<p>Don’t miss the Sunshine and Gold Coast of Australia if you like to swim (though rips are common). Save at least three months for the South Island of New Zealand.</p>
<p>Have a great time, mate.</p>
<p>I realize how big Australia is - I didn’t mean a “base” that I keep going back to, but at the very least, a “base” that I start in (and stay at, if I like it enough).</p>
<p>cheers, I spent 2 weeks in the North Island, three in the South. I love New Zealand, but I’d rather visit other areas if I had a chance to go back to the South Pacific.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the help!</p>
<p>Edit: The flight from LA to Auckland DID have horrible turbulence. At least we had personal TVs for each seat.</p>
<p>Cheers: has so much changed in the four years since DH, self, and kids were in Melbourne and Sydney? Or in the six months since DS was in Perth? I bet it’s just a matter of whom you talk to…</p>
<p>Perhaps Melbourne looks staid to tourists. </p>
<p>For backpackers, gappers and residents of the region, Melbourne is known as the hipper, artier city. Moot point anyway, as unreg wants to explore outdoor pursuits.</p>
<p>For that, he should start in Sydney and work his way around the continent, IMO. We just entertained four 20-something Dublin gappers who had done exactly that over a period of six months. They loved it. Not as much as exploring Africa or Peru–but they had fun driving the width and breadth of Australia in an old car they bought. They are on a two year around-the-world trip.</p>
<p>Thank you all very much for your help.</p>
<p>My D did a spring semester in Perth. Loved it. Several of her friends, many male, are avid outdoors types. Surfing was a HUGE draw, along with scuba.
It is farther away, as many have pointed out. </p>
<p>If there’s to be a comparison with a US city, I think San Diego is a better reflection than Tampa, especially in terms of weather and what’s important to the local community.</p>
<p>And as you have mentioned, WA has many many places to pursue outdoor adventure. Also, Margaret River was a fabulous place by all accounts.</p>
<p>D travelled alot, including Brisbane, Sydney, and New Zealand. I think if she were to go back for an extended period now, she would choose other than Perth, only because she’s already explored it.</p>
<p>Be sure and look at the distances and travel costs involved in getting to Eastern Australia. If that makes it less attractive, you probably should choose other than Perth, in spite of it clearly meeting some of your goals for outdoor exploration. Whatever you choose, you will have an amazing time.</p>