Hi Rene,
Suggest you also drop a PM to spacezebra (Petra) who has just graduated
from USQ with a Bachelor of Science with a major in Astronomical and
Space Sciences :-
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/member.php?u=410
As far as career opportunities beyond that in Australia :-
Australia is at the forefront of radioastronomy and there is the
CSIRO radiophysics campus at Marsfield here in Sydney.
In fact this is the place that WiFi was invented.
There is also the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR)
headquartered in Perth currently building the world's largest
radiotelescope in conjunction with the SKA consortium.
The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in WA will also be housing one of the world's
most powerful supercomputers to process the mind-boggling amounts of data
flowing from the SKA. More data will pass through it at any one moment than the
entire Internet does today.
https://pawsey.org.au/pawsey-and-the-ska/
Australia is also at the absolute forefront of instrumentation building
for optical telescopes and Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) are sited
at Macquarie University. They are currently building advanced
robotic instrumentation for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and
GMTO's Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) as well as for the Subaru
Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, for both Gemini north in Chile
and Gemini South in Hawaii, for the Eastern Anatolia Observatory
in Turkey and both the AAO and UKST here in Australia.
In fact the enormous experience and expertise of the instrumentation
builders at the AAO is the key to the cheap membership ticket Australian
astronomers get to be able to access the giant ESO telescopes.
