College

So this is Burgmann College, one of the halls of residence at the uni. Not being centuries old, the colleges at the uni don't quite have the same feel as back home.  The front of them are fairly St. Catz like in appearance, which not particularly awful, but certainly not that attractive.  The new blocks though, round the back are pretty nice, as you tend to expect from more recent architecture.  The big difference though between some of the colleges here and at home is the fact that all the corridors are open air! Shaded and sheltered but still outside. Its a bit bizzare but of course makes sense in a dry country.

Burgmann is where EG lives, and lies towards the lake end of campus not that far from the department. The blocks he's staying in are self-contained apartments for about five people, with a nice living room/kitchen area, I guess the kind of place that my third-year accommodation was aiming to be! He moved into Burgmann relatively recently and now that its long vac here there aren't too many people around. The colleges tend to lack a sense of community in the way that the Oxford ones did and do, there are only eight main colleges and two grad-only colleges and consequently many people live out for their entire time, or live at home. The Australians are certainly more Scottish than English in their choices of university and moving half-way across the country, partly due to the fact their is no centralised admissions system and so there is an admin fee for every state they apply to uni in.

I guess the community aspect is what made colleges back in Oxford so good and perhaps thats the kind of thing thats missing here.  Whenever I visited a college in Oxford (and it was the same here), I tended to feel a bit of regret at not spending more time on site during my undergrad days, I guess it would have been fun.  But on the other hand I lived in great houses, so perhaps its just a case of the grass appearing greener and maybe I would have felt a longing to live out had I lived more in, as it were. Afterall, I no longer have to deal with pointless college admin!