Just Moved to Melbourne? Your First Week, Sorted
The boring admin, in the right order, so you can get to the good part faster.
The first week in a new city is mostly logistics. The good news is that Melbourne's admin is fairly painless if you do it in the right order. Here is the version that saves you the most backtracking.
We are not your migration agent or your accountant, and we will not pretend to be. Where something is official, we link you straight to the people whose job it is.
Get moving: Myki and the Free Tram Zone
Buy a Myki card at any station, 7-Eleven or the PTV hub at Southern Cross, and load some money on it. Inside the central Free Tram Zone you do not need to touch on at all. Outside it, always touch on; inspectors are real and fines are not fun.
A SIM and a bank
A prepaid SIM from any supermarket or phone shop will have you connected in ten minutes. For a bank account, the big four all let you start the application online before you arrive; you usually just verify ID in a branch once you are here.
The official bits, from official sources
- For visa conditions and work rights, go straight to the Department of Home Affairs.
- For a Tax File Number, the ATO has the only application you need; never pay a third party for one.
- For arrival support, free events and student help, Study Melbourne is the Victorian Government's hub and it is genuinely good.
The part no checklist covers
You can sort all of the above in a few days. The thing that actually takes time is people: a city full of them and no one to text on a Sunday yet. That part is not a personality problem, it is a logistics one, and it is fixable. We wrote a longer piece on making friends in Melbourne as an adult, and the short version is that you have to show up somewhere more than once until the faces stop being strangers.
Filed for The Dispatch. Sunny writes for everyone who landed last week, still working out which tram goes where.
