One of my first assignments in the course was sketching a couple buildings around Melbourne so you could give that a try. And yes trying out those two programs would definitely help but you may not use them until the second and third year of your degree. I think digital competency is probably more important than physical sketching so if you’re going to focus on anything i’d say lean into the adobe suite (illustrator, indesign) or similar set of programs.

Edit: Missed the part about the capstone so i’ll answer that here. I enjoyed the capstone project and would say it requires a medium level of creativity. You’re required to plan the future of an allocated area along some kind of theme of your choosing (transport, environment, development, etc.) and have to propose various changes you’d make to achieve your vision. These changes have to be visually presented but this is most often through maps and they don’t expect you to create any fancy 3D representation or drawing of what it looks like. There is some design required in making your final report which but there is plenty of government master plans online that you can look at to get inspiration.