Upon beginning postgraduate research at the Faculty of Built Environment at UNSW, the authors were surprised to find themselves working in a library-like environment, where a culture of silence prevailed. Assuming initially that this was just how postgraduate research was, they soon learned that the building also housed a second postgraduate lab with a different work environment featuring more interaction. This discovery prompted the authors to create an informal research community group, the Cohort Knowledge Share Group (CKSG), and to develop a "mini-thesis" to explore the lab differences and to share the thesis creation process. Auto-ethnographic perspectives shaped the mini-thesis study, which utilized mixed methodology incorporating a questionnaire, individual reflections and interviews, focus group sessions and observation. The mini-thesis results illustrated that despite undertaking a common journey, the research student community's diverse and multicultural nature created complex needs for facilities, community engagement and personal support. In addition, while undertaking the mini-thesis study, the authors discovered that the innovative CKSG model had changed the sense of community in the main postgraduate lab, as well as the broader research student journey. As this case study will show, the CKSG has therefore been a transformative experience in more ways than one. (Contains 4 tables, 6 figures and 2 footnotes.)