My beginner strategy.

Glad to hear regardless your opting for a house, that sounds like a wise decision

No the 6 year exemption rule is an ATO ruling that allows you to claim the PPOR CGT exemption even if you don’t live in the property for up to a period of 6 years.
The main rules are:
1 - You must have lived in the property and show evidence of this (utility bills for example).
2 - You cannot own another PPOR in that period (well you can but the exemption will stop at the time you move often the new property).

So let’s say you purchase your property for 500k and move in, then 1 year later you move out and start renting. In the time since moving out let’s say you don’t buy another PPOR for 6 years.

Now let’s say you sell that property just prior to the 6 years for 1mil (great buy ).
Without the exemption rule you would need to pay a CG on the 5 years you rented the property. So if we use 80k a year in value that would be a 400k CG. You would then get the standard 50% reduction for a whopping 200k CG.

With the 6 year rule your CG is zero.
0 or 200. U decide