UQ was running a student rental search site from 03 to around 08 when I last looked at it, I'm unsure if this is it re-made
http://uqrentals.com.au/ (just do the search up the top, no login needed).
The first thing I did when I finished school was get the fuck away from my crazy christian family who were forcing me to go to churches and whatnot, and so lived in a half dozen shared houses over the next decade. Basically, if quiet is your thing, look for people who want quiet. They'll usually say. My best flatmates were normally from asia or the asia pacific, they seemed to have a tonne of money and wanted to not take a single risk for their entire time in Australia. :P
Make sure that you clean, especially dishes, flatmates who don't clean are balls. Get a detergent handle brush thing and always wash everything immediately before shit settles, and you'll always be good. You can generally throw bleach on everything in bathrooms and run away if you're lazy like me.
You can get places from $80 a week, but realistically for a half decent place, you may be looking at closer to $150 a week (before bills), or even higher. Keep in mind when other people are using the net before raping it with torrents, and if you have a quota (not that it's a big deal these days), try not to get your entire house's internet shaped... It's the worst thing ever for a house of students trying to sign up to classes or something before the preferred spots are taken, or submitting assignments.
Around December to January a shittonne of student accommodations open up, due to being between semesters. Closer to the end, a lot of share houses probably begin to take structure and then will be posting that they're looking for more people. If you walk around a uni suburb, you can normally find a ton of advertisements looking for flatmates in bus stops.
Also avoid cheap places that are listed like a dozen times, they're generally monstrosity buildings that are designed to cram a jillion students in, just run by somebody turning a profit from it somehow. You want to rent alongside people who are generally just looking for one more, and you also may be required to go onto the lease, which means that the rest of you have to pick it up if somebody else leaves, or break the lease and have that against you in the future. If everybody else leaves, it can leave you pretty screwed. It's not as likely that you'll find a replacement during semester.
If you reckon that you can handle a full lease period without letting people down, you can probably look for PhD students who have been doing it for a half decade and are used to the whole situation. Age differences can make things weirder though.
You'll generally need to pay a 4 week bond (sometimes 8, sometimes 2) before signing up. The rental association is supposed to hold that, not your landlord or flatmates, though you generally pay at the real estate agent's office.
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