The arrival checklists that circulate on Xiaohongshu are written for Sydney and Melbourne. They are useful, and they will get one important thing wrong if you are landing in Canberra, because Canberra is small enough that nobody writing for a large audience remembers it exists.
- The transport card — the mistake
- A phone number, on day one
- Getting in from the airport
- The rest of it
The transport card — the mistake
Every version of the checklist has this section. It says: transport cards differ by state, do not buy the wrong one. Then it lists three.
| City | Card | In the checklist? |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | Opal | Yes |
| Melbourne | Myki | Yes |
| Brisbane | Go Card | Yes |
| Canberra | MyWay+ | No |
Canberra runs its own system, MyWay+, through Transport Canberra. None of the other three will work here. This is not a small omission — it is the exact category of advice the checklist exists to give, and it stops one city short.
Check current fares and top-up arrangements on the Transport Canberra site before relying on anything written here. Ticketing changed recently and every page describing it goes stale fast, this one included.
A phone number, on day one
The one piece of advice in those checklists that transfers intact: sort out a SIM before or immediately on arrival. Without a number you cannot order a ride, open a bank account, or receive the verification code that every Australian service will insist on sending you.
The three names that come up are Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. A short prepaid plan first, then a proper one once you know where you live and how bad the reception is there, is the pattern people recommend.
Getting in from the airport
Check whether the university runs an airport pickup or shuttle during orientation. It is often free, or cheaper than a rideshare — and standing outside an unfamiliar airport with two suitcases and no working phone is the moment people describe as the worst part of arriving.
Search the university site for "airport pickup" or "airport shuttle" before you fly, not after you land.
The rest of it
Bank account, tax file number, Medicare or OSHC, enrolment. These are the four things everyone tells you to do in your first fortnight, and this page has nothing first-hand to add about them yet.
That gap is deliberate. A guide that pads out its thin sections is worse than one with a hole in it, because you can no longer tell which parts to trust. When I have been through them, this section will say so.