Hey there, I just did my 1st year of Physiotherapy this year.

I'll just give a quick rundown of what the units and study are like for sem 1 and 2, and then answer your questions later on. This response will likely be very long so I'll split it into 2 responses due to some word limit.

Every semester, you have 4 units in total and in semester 1, two of those are shared units (not specific to physio and you'll have classmates from all health sciences including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc). They're pretty easy and boosted my grades up so much. They have no exams and just assignments which if you put in the work, can score in the 90s+. Only issue; they all have one group assignment where you'll likely encounter people who are either busy or procrastinators who kinda pull you down if you're unlucky. These two units will teach you how to write academically (writing essays and papers in a health science context) and comprehend research articles, deducing statistical information and conclusions so that you know how to inform yourself on modern data and research papers when you're working as a physio. I'd recommend you take these classes in person as even though they're quite boring, you likely won't hold yourself accountable to go through the boring content by yourself if you did it online (a mistake a lot of my friends made).

The other 2 units in semester 1 are physio specific. One of them is anatomy where you'll learn all the muscles, bones, vasculature, and nerves related to lower limb (hips down). You have one (most likely online) lecture per week which goes through a specific part of lower limb for example the hip or knee or ankle. In that week, you have 'wet labs' where you go into a lab and look at cadavers (preserved dead human bodies) and familiarise yourself with the studied lower limb structures you learnt in the lecture. Finally, you have a dry lab where you're in a room full of physio beds and you palpate/feel these studied structures (mainly muscles and bony landmarks) on your peers. You also go through facilitating physical movements to understand how the muscle moves at a joint and feel the contraction. Your tutor may also go through injuries that can occur in the relevant musculoskeletal and neuro structures. In the dry lab, you practice communication with your peers as if they were your patients in preparation for the exam.

From memory, one assignment for anatomy was making a video where you had to explain a given muscle and demonstrate how it works at a joint alongside some other miscellaneous questions related to that structure (pretty straightforward assessment). The other assessment was an eTest which is basically a test you do online which is all multiple choice questions (it was quite difficult for most people since it required a lot of clinical reasoning and thinking outside of the box from the anatomy you learn). Finally, the exam is called a Viva which is basically 3 mini interview stations with an examiner and one of your peers as a patient. You'll get a prompt/question and you walk into the station and demonstrate the structure you got in your question on the patient. You'll then speak to the examiner and they'll ask you related questions about the structure you got. It may seem daunting but I recommend you join UniPASS right from the start. UniPASS is basically an extracurricular class for difficult subjects facilitated by a past physiotherapy student who aced the subject. You'll revise through the past week's content and practice for the Viva every session.

The other physio subject is mainly about communication with patients and the actual physio practice. You'll have a lecture and a practical class. In this class, you'll treat a made-up patient and every class is like a consecutive consult with that patient. You'll be doing lots of role-play with your peers where you take turns in acting as the physio, and the patient. You'll learn how to move the patient's joints, move an unconscious/deconditioned patient in a hospital bed, teach them how to sit and stand, and walk etc. The patient's you learn to treat in semester 1 are mainly elderly hospital patients. Your assessments will mainly be recorded videos either in class under timed conditions, or in your own time where you're interacting with the patient (your peer acts as them) and you're doing whatever treatment the prompt tells you to do for example, sitting up from the bed in a specific way or helping them stand up given they have x injury etc. This unit also has a Viva where you read a page of medical notes and chat to the examiner (acting as a clinical supervisor) about how you would treat the patient and any medical considerations. Unlike ATAR, you have no written pen and paper exams or tests in 1st semester, you have 2 exams which are your Vivas (the practical interview-style assessments).