The smell of sizzling sausages filled the air, mingling with the faint-but-hopeful scent of a new academic year. Or was that just the ripe smell of unwashed, 18-year-old boy?
Students streamed in from far and wide to celebrate the annual O-Festival at the university this week, enrolling in their various courses and touring the campus they would call home for the next three or so years.
The fresh-faced students, not yet marred by years of late nights and alcohol abuse, wandered wide-eyed around the festival-style stalls, picking up freebies and signing their lives away to the various clubs on offer.
The festival was a bang of colour, with stalls, food vans, activities, live music and clubs turning out in full force to cover the central walkways.
Outdoor adventurers, cosplay gurus, Harry Potter fans, car enthusiasts, poetry lovers – there was a club to suit everyone.
“It’s pretty good, a lot of information, a lot of free stuff, it made it all really easy,” said first-year psychological sciences student Josh Gamboa.