May-August visit

[danascully96]

I’m an American law student applying for a funded externship this May-August with fees paid by my school.

After some research, I’ve decided to put Melbourne down as the city I’m thinking of living in, but I was wondering if any of you had advice about what city would be best for someone in my situation?

For reference, one of my favorite cities I’ve ever lived in was Edinburgh (not sure how helpful that is for Australia). I’m not tan or blonde (I’m a redhead), so I’m worried I’ll feel like an outcast in a beachy environment.

More generally, do you have advice for a young woman looking to explore Australia and the surrounding countries? Is the time of year I’m hoping to explore Australia going to be rainy/cold in Melbourne and elsewhere? Also, what books/shows/movies would be helpful for highlighting Australian culture(s)? For instance, I greatly enjoyed Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

Thanks!
👩🏻‍🦰

The blonde tanned Aussie is a stereotype and a bit of a myth. I think you'll be very surprised when you come over here. Of course they do exist but not to the extent that a lot of people who have never been here would think.

1/3 of aboriginal people in Australia live in nsw, with western Sydney being the highest density population of indigenous Australians in Australia. The perception is not the reality.

What’s the work you’re doing while you’re over there? There are indigenous Australians all over of course, but the experience of IAs living in Sydney would of course be very different to those living in rural Australia.

@Codlingmoths yes good point re: population numbers.

Lots of the indigenous people I know in Vic were originally from QLD or WA funnily enough. Not a big sample of people obviously 😅

Completely depends on what aspect the OP is looking at. I’ve worked with a really high concentration of Indigenous people in several adjoining inner Sydney suburbs, and also in remote settings where the concentration was not high because the remote settings are widely distributed. Both scenarios have their struggles but they are polar opposite in terms of what they need for support, which was one of the iffy things about the Voice, how were completely different populations with completely different needs going to be represented adequately with that?

Whoops, I decided not to post my above post after all, but then I’ve accidentally hit ‘post.’

Ignore my post above. I’ll ask for it to be deleted.

It’s nothing to do with the info that OP was asking for. Don’t want to derail.