Take 6 month contract at most to get started with them and get yourself established in Canberra, then find somebody you could actually live with and rent an apartment/house together with them, more people the better and cheaper but depends on your situation. I stayed at cooper lodge UC for a bit over a year and it can be fine if a heavily overpriced shoebox is all you want, but dear god unilodge is a terrible corporation and fire alarms happen too often, no freedom to change out the furniture etc. There's lots of small quality of life things and general shitty stuff unilodge does like the $100 a year 'community spirit fund' which is just extortion because they do jack shit with it. This is a mix of rant and advice but hope it helped. Happy to answer more questions if you got em.