New in Sydney
Make new friends at our Sydney Asian meetup
Join a hosted Asian meetup in Sydney where solo guests can meet people in a relaxed room. Easy English is welcome, and friendship comes first.
What you join in Sydney
A regular Saturday room
Meetup runs every second Saturday from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm at Harts Pub, Essex St and Gloucester St, The Rocks.
Come on your own
Solo guests are welcome. The shared language is English, and Easy English is fine.
Simple entry rules
RSVP on Meetup before you come and check the current entry details. Bring photo ID and buy at least one drink.
Use public transport
Harts Pub is 5 minutes from Circular Quay Station and 8 minutes from Wynyard Station.
Sydney's real obstacle is geography
Sydney is enormous and the harbour cuts it in half. Where you live is decided by what you can afford, not by who you would like to be near, so newcomers routinely end up in a suburb with no connection to anyone they have met.
That produces a friendship failure that has nothing to do with liking each other. You have a great conversation, you swap numbers, and then every attempt to meet up collapses under the travel. Anywhere convenient for you is inconvenient for them. Nobody says no; the plan just never survives contact with the timetable.
Cost stacks on top. A casual dinner here is not casual money, so people quietly decline invitations and it looks like disinterest when it is a budget.
If you have arrived from overseas, add a third layer: you are probably working or studying in your second language all week, and the energy for socialising afterwards is not infinite. None of this means you are bad at meeting people. It means Sydney needs a different approach from the one that worked at home.
Work with the map, not against it
The fix is to stop treating your suburb as the centre of your social life. Pick a meeting point that is central for everyone rather than close to you, and stay on train lines you already ride.
This is why the Sydney event sits in The Rocks. Circular Quay is five minutes' walk away, and Circular Quay connects to nearly everything — trains north and west, ferries across the harbour, buses east. Almost nobody in this city can say the venue is impossible to reach, which is a genuinely rare thing in Sydney.
Finishing at 9:00 pm on a Saturday gives you time to talk without rushing. If a group decides to continue somewhere else, you can join without wrecking your night.
The fortnight gap, and what to do with it
Sydney runs every second Saturday, not weekly. Two weeks is long enough to forget a name, so the event alone will not build you a friend group. Treat the Saturday as where you meet people and the fortnight in between as where you keep them. One or two follow-ups between events is what turns a pleasant night into an actual circle.
Follow-ups that survive Sydney
Pick two people, not everyone
Messaging six people after one night is exhausting and none of it goes anywhere. Choose the one or two you would actually want to see again and put your effort there. Two per fortnight compounds fast.
Message within two days
After that the memory fades and the message needs an explanation. A short one on Sunday or Monday reads as friendly. The same message eleven days later reads as odd.
Name a place and a time
"Coffee near Town Hall on Thursday after work?" gets an answer. "We should catch up sometime" does not. Give them something they only have to say yes or no to.
Meet in the middle, literally
Choose somewhere central to both of you, even if it means travelling further than they do. Being the one who absorbs the extra twenty minutes is the cheapest way to keep a new friendship alive in this city.
Come back next fortnight regardless
Even if no follow-up landed. Being a face people recognise is worth more than any single conversation, and at around forty guests a night, you will start recognising people by your third visit.
Common questions
Why does Sydney feel lonely even when you are busy?
Distance and rent. Sydney spreads people across a huge area and pushes newcomers into whichever suburb they can afford, which is often nowhere near the people they get on with. A friendship that would survive a ten minute walk quietly dies at a forty five minute train ride.
The meetup is only fortnightly. Is that enough?
On its own, no. A fortnight is long enough to forget a name. Treat the Saturday as the place you meet people and the fortnight in between as the time you actually build something, by following up with one or two of them.
Where should I suggest meeting between events?
Somewhere on a train line you both already use, near the city rather than near your house. In Sydney the invitation that gets accepted is the one that does not add an hour of travel to someone's day.
How many people should I follow up with?
One or two per event, not everyone. Sending five messages after a night out is unsustainable and reads as scattered. Two good follow-ups a fortnight turns into a real circle within a few months.
Is a Saturday event better than a weeknight?
For Sydney, yes. Nobody is arriving exhausted from work or watching the clock for the last train home, so conversations run longer and groups often carry on somewhere else afterwards.
Do I need to know anyone to come?
No, and most people do not. Arriving alone is the normal case rather than the exception, and hosts introduce you into a group rather than leaving you to break in on your own.
When and where is the Sydney event?
Every second Saturday, 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, at Harts Pub on the corner of Essex and Gloucester Street in The Rocks. RSVP on Meetup before you travel.
What does it cost?
Check Meetup for current entry details before you travel. Bring a photo ID for the venue.
Start with one Saturday
Five minutes from Circular Quay. Book before you go.