no worries David.
there is no need to give up this idea as you can still buy it. There are some companies that can help in situations like this for a small fee. Recently I used one of them to buy one device from the only computer shop that was selling it. It was US shop and they refused to ship the device to AU address due to a dealer agreement with a manufacturer.
I didn't want to bother my US friend again and I found these guys
http://www.priceusa.com.au/
They did their job as it was expected. It just took a week longer and made the total price a bit higher but finally I got this device.
cheers,
Mike