About · The person behind the camera
G'day, I'm Anand
In 2018 I packed two suitcases, said goodbye to my family in Surat, and got on a one-way flight to Australia. I landed in Brisbane knowing almost nobody, understanding maybe half of what people said to me, and having no real idea how any of it worked — the banks, the buses, the rental market, the accents.
I started filming because I wanted my parents to see what my life looked like. Then other people started watching, and I realised something: the practical, unglamorous stuff nobody explains — how long a Tax File Number takes, what rent actually costs, why "we're after someone with local experience" is the most demoralising sentence in the language — is exactly what people moving here are desperate to know.
So that's what this is. Anand in Australia is a video journal and a written one: travel vlogs from around the country, day-in-the-life videos, and honest field notes about immigrant life Down Under. The wins and the mistakes, with the numbers included.
01. What you'll find here
- Travel vlogs — road trips across South Australia, Victoria and beyond, from the Twelve Apostles to Blue Lake and the caves at Naracoorte.
- Field Notes — written guides on moving here, first-week paperwork, cost of living, and finding that first job.
- The Journey Journal — the longer story, told chapter by chapter, from Surat to base camp in Adelaide.
- Day-in-the-life — work, food, festivals and the ordinary rhythm of settling into a new country.
02. Why Adelaide
After Brisbane, and after a fair bit of the east coast, I settled in Adelaide — and I'm still here, still recommending it to anyone who'll listen. Affordable enough to actually build something, small enough to learn quickly, twenty minutes from a beach in one direction and the hills in the other. I wrote out the whole argument, cons included.
Adelaide is base camp, not the finish line. The plan is to keep travelling and keep filming — the rest of the world is firmly on the list.
03. Why you can trust what's here
Everything I publish comes from living it, not from summarising someone else's article. When I give a number, it's from my own life at the time I wrote it. When something is outside my experience, I say so and point you at the official source — because visa and money decisions deserve better than a stranger's guess. I correct posts when readers tell me I've got something wrong, and I'd rather be useful than impressive.
04. Say hello
Genuinely — I read the comments and the messages. If you're planning a move, already here and finding it hard, or just want to argue about which city is best, get in touch through the contact page or any of the links below.
see ya in the next chapter, mate 👋