German at USYD is good. I did beginners last year. Most of the tutors are actual germans on exchange for postgrad stuff, so they have lots of funny german stories and cool german accents.
If I could offer any advice, I would point out they move through the chapters at a pretty snappy pace, and so if you miss a few tutes in a row and think you'll catch up, you can find that the class is a chapter ahead of you of theres a quiz on Thursday.
Also, for the oral presentation (2nd semester) most people who wrote out of a dictionary and attempted huge complicated sentences crashed and burned, the best marks I saw went to people with simple sentences from stuff we learnt in class (and cool powerpoint presentations)
If I could offer any other advice, it would be buy my textbooks
Why queue up for hours at the co-op to feel ripped off by paying $100 for 2 small books?
2nd hand is the way to go.