Australian travels

Sylvain Thach

Autumn 2024 Study Abroad student from Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux

Lyon, France

Hi everyone, I’m Sylvain from France. After my first year in engineering school, I had pretty good results, so I had the opportunity to study abroad for a semester or a year. I thought that it would be great to take this chance to discover new cultures and to get out of my comfort zone. To make the most out of my experience, I had to choose a country really far away from my home country, so I thought, why not Australia? It’s kinda hard to go further than this huge remote island.

When I arrived, I had lot of places to visit in my mind but then I realised that most places are hard to get to without a car, and guess what I don’t have my driver’s license… So I searched again for places easily accessible by public transport.

Luckily, I quickly made friends at UTS thanks to the different activities offered by Activate UTS and their Discover Sydney program. With those friends, I went to a surf camp at Seven-mile Beach over the weekend, and the experience was absolutely amazing. It was my first time getting on a surfboard, and it went really well. We also got lucky as it was a really sunny weekend with great waves to begin on the first day and then bigger waves on the second day. We got to see amazing sunsets and sunrises throughout the weekend.

Less than 2 hours drive from Sydney you will find the wonderful Figure eight pools, natural pools carved by the ocean over several years. Although the walk/hike to the place can be dangerous it offers a really nice view over the ocean and the surrounding national park.