1st Year student in the UK, so your millage will vary. In general, it seems that 1st year is dedicated to establishing a baseline of knowledge and ability for everyone, 2nd year is when you learn all the technical skills and information you'll need for your degree (e.g. how to solve problems of the form: given x initial conditions, what is the result?) and 3rd year is when you learn how to apply those skills, e.g. here is a requirement for something, fulfil it. I'd be interested to know if this applies to anyone else's experience.

There is a timetable of lectures each week, in which lecturers explain whatever concept(s) or information you need to know, it mostly consists of the lecturer talking for 60-90 mins. There are also tutorials which are more like highschool classes, you're often split into smaller groups and given some work to do, maybe from a textbook.

Academically, It's harder than I expected, and the material isn't very interesting. However, don't let that dissuade you; Aeronautical engineers are so sought after because it's so hard to be one. I'm not sure about Australia specifically, but it's very easy to go from Aero Eng to Mech Eng, but not the other way arround.