When I left south-west London for Sydney a year ago, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect – at least, I thought I did. It was the city I’d fallen in love with as a backpacker in 2020, the place I’d fallen in love with my now-partner (also British) four years later. In the nine long months I was back in the UK before I officially moved to Sydney in September 2024, I had a picture of our new beachside flat saved as my phone background and a picture of my new life of sea swims and sunrise coffees etched into my brain.
That mental picture turned out to be pretty accurate, as Instagram expat cliches go. Australians really do walk around barefoot (yes, even in the supermarket). You really can get the ferry to work, and leave your front door unlocked while you’re out all day. The Aussies weren’t lying about the coffee or the beaches, either – they really are the best in the world.
The things I didn’t expect about my new life in Sydney presented themselves in little, non-extraordinary ways. The fact that strangers do actually make small-talk about how big the waves are; that commuters still wear heels to go to work; that public toilets are clean and well-maintained; and that staff actually have time to come over to offer assistance in the pharmacy. A lot of the time, it’s as though you’re living in some kind of exotic parallel universe that looks a bit like the UK and even sounds a bit like the UK – yet the sun is shining, everything works a bit better and no one looks stressed or the remotest bit concerned about having their phone nicked because, well, they probably won’t.
But, there have been bigger, more unexpected elements to living in Sydney too, now I look back on my move, 14 months on.
Katie Strick often sees whales during her commute home (Photo: Katie Strick)Rent is higher than at home
Talk of halving your outgoings when you move to Australia might have been the case a few years ago, but today it’s a myth – at least in Sydney, now the second-least affordable city in the world for housing, after Hong Kong, according to housing research group Demographia. My partner and I each pay the equivalent of £1,050 a month to rent our two-bed Sydney apartment – roughly the same as I paid to rent my place in London, but without the garden – and many friends have ended up paying more in Sydney than they did back at home in London, Bristol or Manchester.
According to official data, rent in Australia is now equivalent to and sometimes higher than the UK, with Sydney rents hitting a record high of $750 a week (£1,488 a month) in July and desperate renters regularly offering $200 a week above asking price to secure a flat. And that’s for properties that are unfurnished (most flats in Sydney come without furniture). Just take a look at TikTok, which is awash with clips of 100-person queues for Aussie rental inspections snaking down the street.
You won’t get creeped on or catcalled
It was one of my first observations upon landing: the way I could walk past a group of builders without any bother. Over the coming weeks and months, I began to wonder if it was a Sydney-thing, not just luck or being in my 30s: I could run past white vans without being wolf-whistled, and could even get away with jogging in shorts and a sports bra.
It turns out this lack of creepiness in Sydney goes further than wolf-whistling. Men here don’t just not catcall; they don’t even bat an eyelid when a woman walks past them in a bikini in the supermarket – which happens regularly.
Katie with friends at a Sydney beach, where remote workers often take their laptops for the afternoon (Photo: Katie Strick)Is it an education thing? A culture thing? Who knows, perhaps it’s simply the lack of novelty. If everyone has their body out the whole time (you feel overdressed in a beach dress), does the novelty of seeing half-naked bodies simply wear off?
You won’t feel left out if you’re single in your thirties
Perhaps it’s the fact that expat culture naturally attracts Peter Pan types keen to reject any settling-down stereotypes. Or perhaps it’s the fact there is quite literally too much fun to be had to waste your time dating. But, when I moved to Sydney to join my boyfriend after years feeling like the only single person left in London, I was excited to finally be in the majority camp – only to discover that somehow, once again, we were in the minority among our friendship group. We are one of a handful of couples surrounded by dozens of happy singles who seemed refreshingly nonplussed about ticking clocks or external pressures to buy houses or have kids.
Katie Strick says Australia’s beaches and coffee really are the best in the world (Photo: Katie Strick)If you want to feel good and less lonely about being single in your 30s, there’s no better place. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Sydney has more single people than any other city in Australia – and refreshingly, most of them are genuinely happy about it.
You’ll struggle to make friends if you don’t run or surf
Moving to Sydney as a non-surfer was daunting, but it turns out running was the real dealbreaker when it came to my social life – a fact that’s been somewhat problematic, given I’m now onto my second of two six month-long injuries. Run clubs aren’t just a fitness thing for expats here; they’re likely to become your most-used WhatsApp groups and the people you call in a crisis, so don’t make the mistake of not joining one because you’re injured or a non-runner. Just choose your club wisely – if you think you’re sporty in the UK, you’re probably not in Australia. And just go along to the coffee after, if you don’t fancy the running part.
If all of this sounds a little cliquey and fitness-obsessed, that’s because it can be – but several friends here learnt the perils of not joining one the hard way. One was adamant to avoid run club culture and eventually caved after half a year of hardly meeting a soul. Another, who was determined to make Aussie friends, is now regretting not befriending her fellow expats, after most of her mates moved out of the city to have kids. Yes, run club culture can feel a little cult-like with its branded tees and Strava chat, but joining one is by far the easiest way to make friends, fast.
It isn’t all surfing and no work
“Is Australia a great place to live but a lousy place to work?” a columnist at The Sydney Morning Herald asked earlier this year, citing high levels of stress and disengagement amongst Aussie workers. The question surprised me – Australia is the work-life balance capital of the world! Everyone looks happy and healthy! People go surfing in their lunchbreaks! – until I really thought about it. Sure, you’ll probably have a less stressful time here if you come over as a doctor, farmer or tradesperson. But for white collar professionals it seems to be a different story, with studies finding that Australians work the longest hours in the developed world, and tie with the US and Canada as the most stressed workers in the world. It’s probably little surprise, then, that the country slipped four places to number eight in Remote’s global work-life balance survey last year.
These stats might not measure up with the number of twenty- and thirty-somethings I see with their laptops on Manly beach at 2pm every Tuesday, but they certainly align with friends’ experiences on the ground. Many work longer hours here thanks to meetings with clients in different time-zones (friends working for the Big Four here regularly have 11pm calls). Many report a more old-school attitude to presenteeism in the office. And the statutory number of annual leave days here is just 20 in Australia compared to the UK’s 28. Apparently, Sydneysiders do work as hard as Londoners, a lot of the time. They just wake up early enough to get in the ocean before work – and don’t go on about it.
Choose your neighbourhood carefully
Realistically, our choice of suburb was the same as it is for every Brit who’s decided to move down under in the last 20 years: eastern suburbs (Bondi or Coogee) or northern beaches (Manly or Freshwater). The advice in our circles was a simple one: go east if you’re in your 20s and still like the idea of a bit of nightlife; head to Manly in your 30s or enjoy going to bed at 9pm. We chose Manly, naturally (we’re 32), which also came with the advantage of being a ferry-ride from the city centre so you can whale-watch on your way to work (“Running late for our 9am, sorry – humpback in the harbour”).
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The downside, it transpires, is this means living on the opposite side of the harbour to one of my closest school friends – and apparently I was mistaken in thinking Sydney’s north-east divide would be comparable to London’s north-south sides-of-the-river debate. It’s worse – which makes sense, given a trip between the two normally involves a ferry and two buses. Sydneysiders have genuinely been known to throw leaving parties when moving to the other side of the harbour. Hot tip: don’t live OTB (over the bridge) from your BFFs if you want to see them regularly.
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