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UniSport is the governing body in Australia for sport at the  university level. They "promote and foster the importance of university sport as an integral part of university life at 43 member universities" and collectively represents one million student-athletes  nationwide who compete locally and nationally in 40 different sports. 

In comparison to the US, Australia does not offer the same degree and breadth of competitiveness in all sports at university. Typically, some sports will be considered "Elite" and therefore standout more within that competitive landscape in the country. If you are part of an "elite" team you might be playing other university "elite" teams but also potentially playing high level non professional clubs as well. It is also possible that while you are representing your university when playing on these "elite" teams, you could potentially have teammates who are not technically part of the university if they didn't qualify academically for that university.

University of Sydney for example, has about 40+ sporting clubs that are a part of their university athletics program but then only 11 of them are considered high performance or elite. 

Similar to Canada and the UK, there are a small amounts of athletic scholarships available to student-athletes called Athlete University Scholarships (AIS). These would be available to who would be considered "elite" athletes. Please see here for a complete list of them nationally and by territory. It is possible that the athletic scholarship one receives could be complimented with an academic scholarship from the university.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IF YOU ARE A STUDENT-ATHLETE LOOKING TO JOIN AN ELITE TEAM?

1. Reach out with an "expression of interest" email to the Manager of the "High Performance Programs" of the university your are interested in. Generally speaking it is more common to start with the that overarching Director/Manager of "Sport" than connect directly with coaches at the start. Most of the bigger universities in Australia will have someone in this type of position. Make sure you include your interests in the university and the sport, as well as any helpful statistics and/or game footage that might help communicate your overall level of ability. You should also cc your university counselor on that email.

2. That person will in turn reach out and connect with the appropriate directors/coaches of your sport to gauge how competitive you might be for their program.

3. Further communication will happen as far as next steps but this could vary depending on the university. Communication might come from that manager or directly from coaches at that point. In that sense, the process is less structured and more organic. 

RESOURCES

University of Sydney Elite Athlete Program
University of Melbourne Elite Athlete Program

Before 2018, intercollegiate athletic competitions were supervised by the  JAAF (Japan Association of Athletic Federation) and mostly organized like club college sports in the U.S. On March 1st, 2019, Japan decided to start its own intercollegiate sports organization called UNIVAS (Japan Association for University Athletics and Sport). It was established with the mission to promote sporting activities among Japanese universities. The three main pillars of our activities are the assurance of student athletes’ academic success, the development of a safe and secure environment conducive to their focused athletic endeavors, and the promotion of varsity sports.

There are currently 222 institutions joined with 34 affiliated organizations and offering 30 different sports.