¶ FIELD NOTES · FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Make friends inMelbourne,as an international student.
FOR THE FIRST SEMESTER AND BEYOND · NO VISA OR TAX ADVICE HERE · JUST THE PART ABOUT PEOPLE
You sorted the visa, the share house, the SIM card and the myki in a week. The part no orientation pack prepares you for is the quiet: a whole city of people and no one to text on a Sunday. Here is the honest version of how a friend group forms when you have just arrived, and where a same-table-every-week club fits in.
What is Hey Sini?
Hey Sini
nounHey Sini is a weekly social club for making friends as an adult in Melbourne. It seats five compatible people near each other at the same table, on the same night, every week for six weeks, and then the table becomes theirs. It is friendship-first, not a dating app, and it opens neighbourhood by neighbourhood, starting around Carlton.
- Format
- one matched table of five
- Rhythm
- same night, every week · a six-week first cycle
- Where
- Melbourne · Jakarta
- Cost
- free to join · founding $19/mo
- Food
- you pay your own bill · we take nothing from venues
- Safety
- public venues · report or block · optional photo check
- The limit
- we suggest the spot; we do not book, host or attend
- Not
- a dating app, and not one-off meetups
CH. 1 — THE QUIET
The first semester is the quiet part.
Why it is hard the moment you land, and why it is not your fault.
If the early months feel lonely, nothing is wrong with you. Australian studies find most international students hit exactly this wall, and usually in three flavours at once: family is far away, you have no network here yet, and you miss the places and the language that used to feel like home.
The scaffolding that quietly handed you friends for years, school, your old neighbourhood, the people you grew up near, disappears all at once, in a new country where even ordering a coffee is a tiny performance. That is a logistics problem, not a personality one. It is fixable, and the fix is more boring and more reliable than the internet makes it sound.
CH. 2 — WHY IT DOES NOT STICK
Orientation and societies are not enough.
Not because they are bad, but because they rarely repeat with the same people.
Orientation week is a firehose, and the societies you signed up for are great until you realise the same people almost never sit together twice. You meet forty people once and zero people four times. Meeting was never the hard part.
It takes something like two hundred hours together to turn an acquaintance into a real friend, and a one-off event, however lovely, never adds up those hours. The fix is repetition: the same small group, on the same night, close to where you already are.
CH. 3 — WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS
The same five, near your campus.
Hey Sini seats you with four compatible people near you and brings the same five back to the same table, the same night, every week for six weeks. Polite strangers at week one, your people by week six. Nothing to pitch, no one to impress, and you are never the one who has to organise it.
We open around Carlton and Parkville first, right by the University of Melbourne, with Brunswick and the rest of the inner north close behind. Pick the neighbourhood nearest your campus and you are in the first group seated there.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Before you sit down.
The cost, the nerves, the areas near the universities, and how it differs from a society.
Is Hey Sini only for international students?
No. It is for anyone in Melbourne building a friend group from scratch. International students just feel it most sharply, because everything is new at once. You are seated on your vibe, your neighbourhood, and the one night you can keep, never on where you are from.
I am shy and my English is still improving. Will I be okay?
A table of five is about the gentlest way to meet people there is: small, low-pressure, and the same faces every week, so it gets easier instead of starting from zero each time. There is nothing to pitch and no one to impress. Most people are quiet at week one.
How much does it cost as a student?
Free to join. A founding seat is $19/mo, locked for life (it is $22/mo after), which holds your recurring table. That is less than one cancelled brunch a month. You pay for your own food at the table; we never take venue money.
Which areas near the universities are open?
Melbourne is opening neighbourhood by neighbourhood, starting around Carlton and Parkville, right by the University of Melbourne and a short tram from RMIT. Sign up with your area and we open it once enough nearby students and newcomers have signed up to fill a table.
How is this different from a uni society or a club?
Societies are great, but they are big, busy, and easy to drift out of, and the same people rarely sit together twice. Hey Sini seats you with the same four people every week, so familiarity has a chance to build into an actual friend group.
LAST THING
Opening by the universities first.
Founding members get the table dues-free for six weeks and a price locked for life. An area opens once enough people nearby have signed up to fill a table, starting around Carlton and Parkville, close to the University of Melbourne.
More in the guide to making friends in Melbourne, the FAQ, or how we keep tables safe.