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My observatory at Clayton is 6km from the southern coast, the Murray Mouth and behind Hindmarsh Island. The winds during the day tend to be off the ocean. Seeing at Clayton can be as good as 0.7 arc seconds. Generally though it is around 1.5 arc seconds. I have done some great imaging there both planetary and DSO and can say when we sell the property I will miss the seeing. There are to my knowledge a few sites around Australia on the coast that have excellent seeing but they are quite a way from Cities. One military installation was built at Exmouth because the seeing there is as good as altitude. They run several very large scopes there imaging objects in near earth orbit. If you are on the east coast though seeing seems to be poor in general. I spent quite a bit of time in my younger years living in the eastern states and seeing always seemed average to me.
Seeing aside the cloud is problematic at Clayton. I often can only image sections of a night because of cloud fronts moving into the site. Hence why I set up remote systems on site. So bear in mind the cloud.
Salt laden air can also be a problem too. On cameras that draw in air over the boards of the camera the salt laden air will destroy a camera in no time. I know one manufacturer that completely redesigned their cameras to combat that problem as they were seeing many cameras with corrosion on their boards coming in for service work. My QSI was completely unaffected by the salt though as the design only pulls air over the casing which acts as the heat sink. None of the other equipment (mounts, telescopes etc) had any trouble either. Salt also creates more work on your house too. Paint etc degrade faster near the ocean.
Personally, I think if you can find a spot in land, away from the ranges (without steep topographic which cause eddies in the air) you are likely to get pretty good seeing and dark skies. There are plenty of nice townships in South Australia within the International Dark Sky Reserve that fit that bill. Some are even quite cosmopolitan now.
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