Just a quick note re: salaries - you should be able to find the breakdown of the base salary/salary package fairly easily. For many universites it's included in the ad, for others you could easily ask.
Pasting a random example from a current Sydney ad with the pre-tax salary range highlighted:
Remuneration package: up to $88,465 - $105,052 p.a. pro rata (
which includes a base salary Lecturer Level B $74,755 - $88,771 p.a., leave loading and up to 17% employer’s contribution to superannuation).
You can find most of the tax information you'd need here:
http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/The extra superannuation is really a bonus if you stay till retirement, by the way.
I grew up in Sydney with parents who never earned anywhere near this sort of money, and had a lovely childhood. I know the cost of living has gone up, but that's not an insignificant salary. There are certainly things you'd be hard pressed to do on that income level - buy a house by the beach or harbour (house prices in Sydney are nasty); send multiple children to the top private schools (some have fees of $10 000/year and rising); drive a top-of-the-range car. But you probably wouldn't be doing all that on an American salary either.
Sydney is a big city, and has many of the advantages and disadvantages that big cities everywhere have. Some schools are good (proud public school graduate here); some less so. Traffic can be bad; public transport is variable. Australia *is* a long way from most places, and that can make things expensive, but it's not an insurmountable problem with either research or seeing family.
Echoing figee, just remember that it's not the same as home, and consider the difference between visiting and living in Oz. (Bondi Beach was rarely a part of my day to day life, for example!)
