Major noob looking for friends, and a few basic questions.

[Keydah]

Everyone I see is level 50. Is this normal? I was hoping to find some other low level people to progress with just to make it a little more fun.

I'm on Goblin and I see plenty of people leveling their classes, from the lowest level to highest level areas. I think a lot of people that have been playing have grinded all their classes to 50 though, especially now that we're so close to a level cap raise. However, Tiamat may not be a particularly populated server. I don't know anything about it, but it's pretty low on xivsoul's population list (even though it's mid scan right now).

Also, just some basic questions about the game. I think I recall that in 1.0 the only thing you could really do with a party were the levequests. Is that still the case? Can I do quests with other people?

You can do anything that isn't a main story or class quest teleport-in instance in a party. Those ones are meant to be one person only - you can't even go in with your chocobo companion. They're generally short little things like protecting someone or defeating a mini-boss sort of thing that you have to conquer on your own.

Quests (Main Story quests included), FATEs, Leves, dungeons (of course), anything else really can be done in a party. The only exceptions that come to mind are Grand Company leves and the previously mentioned solo instances. Quests that you do with other people don't make you do everything twice, either, if you were worried about that - a lot of them have purple "trigger zones" that start a battle once you cross their lines, and it won't go off twice because you and another party member both crossed. Whoever goes over first spawns the monster(s) and they count for both of your quests when they're killed.

Plus I'm from Australia and I've read that Tonberry seems to be the unofficial Australian server, but it was full when I created a character. Would it be worth trying to wait to get a spot in Tonberry or should I stay in Tiamat?

It just depends on if you want to be with other Australians. I personally don't care, but if you do and have the money to, you can buy a character transfer over to Tonberry. It bypasses the server locks.