Trust me, I lived in Sydney
My stay was short but intense
When I tell people I lived in Australia and then mention it was just for a month and a half, a lot of people think I was just visiting, not living.
But trust me, I lived there. As for tourism, I barely did any.
And everything went wrong there.
I ended up there on exchange after my university, like all others, took me out of my exchange in Hong Kong because of the 2019 protests.
I then had three months wandering around Asia waiting for the Australian semester to start, but in that case I'll give it to you - I wasn't living, I was a tourist.
But Australia was different.
I got there without a place to stay and spent ten days living in a hostel. I was really sick for most of that time and sharing a room with people working in construction, meaning the place was a mess of gear and clothes, smelled terribly, and featured a lot snoring at night.
I was in this hostel when classes started, which was wild. I'd take a shower, get dressed up, head to uni, and then come back to loud music and drinking. Sounds fun, except I was sick and had a ton of stuff to sort out so didn't partake much.
Student dorms were already full, so I set out to find a somewhat better place to live for the six months I thought I'd be there.
Everything in Australia seemingly happens on Facebook so I had to create a profile as I didn’t have one before. I visited some awful places with weird landlords, but finally found a room in a pretty cool and well-located house in Newtown.
I say I lived in Australia because I only had time to take care of things that someone who lives in a place would. I opened a bank account, got me a phone number, took care of all sorts of documentation, and bought a bike to ride to school.
I first bought this second-hand bike for ten Australian dollars. I cleaned the rust with baking soda and used olive oil as a lubricant for the chains, as suggested by DIY sites online. It didn't last three days before the chain broke.
Then, upon leaving the hostel I decided to treat myself and bought another bike. This time it was new, but still reasonably cheap. The brakes didn't work, so I went back and exchanged it. My third bike I crashed into a car while biking home, flew off, and hit my head on the curb. Luckily I was fine (and so was the bike), saved by the fact that I was wearing a helmet.
The house I lived in had five other residents. Another Brazilian guy, two friends from Italy, a guy from Hong Kong, and an Australian girl (who was Greek by blood). The Australian girl was growing some weed, and the guy from Hong Kong, like just about everyone from there, was one of the friendliest people I've met. Yet, for some reason, a Brit who lived in the house before me followed him around the city and threatened to kill him. One day we discussed what to do about it over dinner, but never got to any conclusions.
Everyone smoked (except me), so the door to the backyard was always open. That meant besides us six the house was also inhabited by a bunch of insects. Particularly these tiny cockroaches, which got through the old rubber on our freezer and died frozen inside with our food. The fridge stank, because in some ways the house was kind of like a hostel too. Except in a hostel there's usually some cleaner that throws out the old food of those who've left, but there nobody wanted to touch anything that wasn't theirs, cause, you know, there's death threats going around and stuff. One day I decided to clean it all up and while throwing out cans and jars I found a ton of stuff that went bad like four or five years earlier.
I made few friends since almost everyone lived in dorms. I had a long-distance girlfriend at the time who lived as far away as possible from Australia, and we ended up not seeing each other for ten months. I started climbing but found out my ulnar nerves were pinched badly and so was always in pain.
I never went to the Opera House, and didn't visit the famous Bondi Beach.
Everything went wrong, but thinking about it now, not really everything.
The guy from Hong Kong worked as a cook, and the Italians were, well, Italian. One night the three of them cooked the best risotto I've ever eaten. In uni I hung out with a girl from Singapore, another from America, one from Spain, and another American guy. I’ll never forget this one karaoke night we had. The Blue Mountains National Park had almost entirely burned down due to some of the roughest fires in history that happened just before I arrived, but I still camped there alone where I was allowed to and really enjoyed it. I joined the vegetarian society (I was vegetarian at the time) and ate well at the events they held. One of my electives was called Learning in Outdoor Education, which you can imagine wasn't too hard of a class and we also had an excursion to another beautiful park. Back then I was also studying Mandarin and would have lunch with two Koreans after class. I learned a lot about Korea, and they were great company.
I guess maybe not everything went wrong.
But then the pandemic hit. In the chaos that ensued, I decided to return to Brazil. Chile had closed its borders, so the only way was to fly through South Africa. When I landed, I found out that while I was flying South African Airlines had gone bankrupt, and I no longer had a flight to Brazil. The airport was a mess. A German woman tried to console me, telling me that my government would get me out of there if things got complicated. Easy for a German to say.
I met a lot of Brazilians who were also trying to get back home, and we all joined the waitlist for the only confirmed LATAM flight to Brazil. I had to spend a night at a nearby hotel, and the next morning I was certain that I had no chance of getting on that flight. So I bought an expensive ticket to Dubai, the only place that seemed mildly stable, and from there a flight to Brazil.
All in all, I spent 72 hours traveling and passed through four continents on my way back. But finally I arrived in Brazil. The next day, I woke up in quarantine and read the news: "Brazilians stuck in South Africa unable to return to Brazil."
That was my story in Australia. So yeah, I lived there.
A few days later, I received a message from the guy from Hong Kong, asking if I was okay. He also sent a picture of an arch at the entrance to Chinatown in Sydney with the following inscription in Mandarin: "家一海四", a simplification of a famous Confucius quote:
"Within the four seas all men are brothers."
I kinda miss my little house in Newtown.
Sorry to hear such a difficult stay in Sydney! You'll have to visit again