Living in Sydney

Sydney's famous Harbour Bridge, which leads north.

Sydney is a beautiful city with lots of choices about where to live. Some students live close to our campuses and can walk or ride a bicycle to classes, other students prefer to further further away and travel to university – and there are good reasons for both options.

If you live on or near the Camperdown/Darlington campus, then you'll be close to diverse restaurants with student-friendly prices in Newtown, Glebe, Annandale and the surrounding areas. You won't have to pay much (if anything) for transport and you'll be close to major services. Accommodation in these areas is very popular though, and can be more expensive than renting a flat further away.

If you decide to live further away from campus, then you may have to pay a bit more for transport costs by bus, train or ferry, but balance this with cheaper rent and quieter locations. You can choose from beachside suburbs in the north or east, live on the other side of the Harbour Bridge in Sydney's north, or look at one of the suburbs to the west – it depends on what suits you.

To find out more about the location of our campuses, and which faculties use them, visit the campuses page.

Information about Sydney and surrounding suburbs can be found on the City of Sydney website. If you want a better idea of where you are looking, go to Google maps, choose an area you are interested in, then use the "Street View" feature under "More" to go for a visual stroll.

Closest suburbs

The Museum of Contemporary Art lit up during Sydney's Vivid Festival.

The suburbs surrounding the Camperdown/Darlington Campus include: Newtown, Enmore, Redfern, Chippendale, Darlington, Eveleigh, Glebe, Central Sydney, Annandale, Stanmore, Forest Lodge and Ultimo. Slightly further away are St Peters, Petersham, Erskinville, Marrickville, and Leichhardt.

Most of these locations are also convenient for the Sydney College of the Arts at Rozelle, if you take a bus there. If you want to live closer to the SCA then Rozelle and Balmain are the closest suburbs.

Suburbs close to the Cumberland Campus are Lidcombe, Aurburn, Regents Park, Chullora, Homebush (near the site of Sydney's Olympic Park). Also fairly close are the larger centres of Strathfield and Parramatta.

Transport in Sydney

Types of transport in Sydney include:

• buses – which run on a wide network through the city and to outer suburbs. You can buy travel passes that give you ten trips at a cheaper rate than paying on the bus. These are available at newsagencies and convenience stores. At peak hours of travel, some buses only accept pre-paid tickets.
• trains – which run all through Sydney and the suburbs. You can buy weekly, fortnightly and monthly passes, which allow unlimited use between the two stations you travel between. You can also buy single and return tickets. The trains stop running at a certain time each time (later on Friday and Saturday night) and are replaced by night buses (for which your ticket is valid).
• ferries – you're most likely to use the ferry if you live in Manly (on the Northern Beaches) or near Cremorne and Mosman, on Sydney's Lower North Shore. Ferries go from these areas to Circular Quay. You can also take buses to these suburbs.
• lightrail – the light rail (tram) runs between Central Station and Lilyfield, in Sydney's inner west.

Of course, if you live in a suburb close the University, the best and healthiest methods of transport are walking and cycling. The University has plenty of places to park a bike.