I might just give a bit of background on Cairns because I can.. it's very much a relaxed atmosphere here. There's an absolutely amazing number of local spots that tourists will pretty much never find or hear about and you won't know about until you've lived here for a while, the night life is pretty decent too (drinks are cheap, clubs are decent, buses run all night on Friday and Saturday) but obviously it's nothing compared to the extravagance of the Gold Coast. Similarly, our beaches (while nice) don't have waves and have jellyfish, which limits activities around summer time a little bit but mostly you spend time in rivers and creeks here more than the ocean anyway.
It gets hot here in summer, like really hot.. But you learn to live with it and dress appropriately, plus if you're only here during the semester you only really have to deal with it for a few weeks because it's usually petered out by around mid March. The dentistry building at JCU was built 2-3 years ago and is brand new in every possible way, and they're still building more facilities now which I'm unsure of the completion time or purpose. The JCU campus from the outside looks old and dodgy but once you actually get in amongst the buildings it's literally built inside a rainforest and is pretty stunning. All the student amenities are pretty much brand new and cheap and they have on campus 24hour kitchens where you can store your food and cook food and so forth, they're really cool. There isn't too much on-campus accomodation, in fact there's technically none but there is the Campus Lodge where a lot of dentistry students live and apartment blocks where also, a lot of dentistry students and other JCU students live. These are about 1km from the Dentistry buildings
Other than that, the uni is in the north of Cairns near the beaches and there's plenty of buses running from the beaches to JCU so it's really easy to get a nice house in an estate out there and just commute every day (~10-15 minutes from Trinity Beach). If you're living anywhere on the south side of Cairns you will definitely need a car because you cannot catch a bus from one side of Cairns to the other, it will take at least 2 buses and one will inevitably be late and thus your connection will be less of a connection and more of a 'now I'm in town and have to wait another hour'. I think from about Redlynch and out you can no longer get single buses to the university, after that it's a bus to smithfield and then a bus to the uni. These are things to consider!
Food here is cheap, especially if you buy your fruit and veges at Rusty's Markets which are unreal. Find a good butcher (there's plenty) and meat is an absolute steal as well
That's about all the random information I can think of about Cairns so far, if you want to know anything else just ask!