i disagree, even thought i do civil engineering at the moment at usyd
the Engineering HSC course caters alot to the generic first year and some 2nd year subjects in uni, of all fields
following the syllabus, depends greatly on your teacher, as my teacher was an electronics one, we ended up getting alot more guidance in those subjects compared to say, the biomedical topic.
anyways, about the "where u should study" issue, it indeed does seem like UTS have a good course for engineers in general, with the work placement and all, but from what i've learnt, its not which uni you're from, but more importantly you as a person, because Uni's don't necessarily make good engineers, its the person getting trained. So just be open minded about trying to get into the different uni's, because i woudln't go anywhere else than Sydney uni, not because their facilities are great or u get work placement
but because its so much dam closer, as well as the friends i have there. might not sound like a strong reason to you, but thats how i based my decision, because uni is more than just getting out of there as soon as possible