I made the jump from a US Regional to Virgin about 18 months ago and the grass is not greener on the other side. As long as you have the right to live and work here, you're good to go. My sim partner in the 737 was an ex-US Navy F18 guy, who'd married and Aussie. Here are the pro's and con's as I see it.
Pro's.
There is going to be a fairly large shortage of qualified pilots here, over the coming years. So much so that Virgin is starting a cadet scheme on the ATR and flow through to Virgin. The ATR's are going to be flown by a regional here called Skywest.
It seems to be a far more stable industry, compared to the US.
Money is better.
More respect.
4.5 - 5 year upgrade onto the B737.
Con's
It is by far the most expensive country I've ever lived in. (I've lived here, Asia, Europe and the US). Rent in SYD is about $2000-2500 a month for a 1 bed apartment.
Groceries are obscene. I haven't eaten a banana in over 6 months because they are $15 a kilo.
Walk out the door and you'll have your hand in your pocket paying for something. You get nickle and dimed, everywhere.
Flying in Australia is an exercise in extreme patience. Everything is different, from the radio calls and airspace to the regs and procedures. It's almost as if you have to learn everything from scratch and they are extremely anal and pedantic about it.
There is no training culture here, it's a checking culture and you can fail a PC for things that would be a debrief item in any other country. One of my friends failed a pc for lack of support, because the Captain had a hard time flying a single engine ILS, raw data down to mins.
Australians are hardly the laid back bunch we've always been known to be. After 16 years away, I've found that they have become so obsessed with appearing laid back, that they've actually become quite uptight.
I thought that this move would be it for me, but it won't be.
Oh, and forget QF. They are in such a mess right now, that they probably
won't survive another 2 years in their current form.