Sydney is the one Australian city that needs no introduction and the one that most needs a clear guide. The largest health system in the country, a spectacular setting, and housing costs that will shape every other decision you make. This guide is about making that trade with your eyes open.
A city built around water
Around five and a half million people live around a drowned river valley — which is why Sydney has no single centre but dozens, and why a journey of four kilometres can take forty minutes. The harbour, the beaches and the national parks that press in from three sides are not scenery here; they are the reason people put up with the rest.
For clinicians the draw is scale. New South Wales runs the country’s largest public health system, and the greater Sydney share of it carries the deepest bench of tertiary and quaternary services, the biggest teaching hospitals, and specialist units that take national referrals. If your field is narrow, or you want to work at the very top of it, the density here is unmatched.
The cost is money. Sydney is one of the least affordable cities in the world for housing, and the gap between an inner-suburb life and an outer-suburb one is wider than in any other Australian city. Everything in this guide is written with that fact in the room.
- Ethicare is a healthcare recruitment company. This guide is free to read, asks nothing of you, and does not give visa advice.
- Sydney is the city candidates most often name first and research least. We will tell you plainly when the sums do not work, and which other city gives you the same career for a great deal less.
The city, in nine numbers
Six things you only learn once you’re here
- Sydney stands on the lands of the Gadigal and other clans of the Eora Nation, and Warrane is the name for the harbour’s cove where the colony began. This is where the colonial history of Australia starts, and the city carries that weight.
- Acknowledgement of Country opens meetings, and health services work in partnership with Aboriginal community-controlled organisations. Take the cultural induction seriously.
How to read this guide
Nine chapters, all about Sydney specifically. Topics true across the state — regional New South Wales, the state health structure — sit in the New South Wales guide. Anything true of Australia generally — Medicare, visas, Ahpra registration, tax, superannuation, schools — lives once in Moving to Australia.
If you read nothing else, read Why Sydney for the full case — and what we’d ask you to weigh, and Cost of living, because in this city the money question comes before the suburb question.