Thanks Carl for your answer, straight to the rescue once again
Hi Pete, more than happy to let you know about the options I found, this also gives me a small chance to contribute to the forum, rather than taking, as I have a short history of doing so!
Being in Melbourne, as an on campus student, you have the option of Monash or Melbourne Uni. Swinburne has postgraduate research options, but not for undergraduate degrees. I know that other uni's run the odd astronomy unit for their physics majors, but as electives (if I'm wrong please inform me). You can also do an astronomy major at Monash or Melbourne as long as you have a degree, but its known as a postgraduate diploma and since my undergraduate degree was not in science, this means that I have loads of required units to do before I take the astro ones. If you have time these options would be ideal as you get tutorials and prac classes and face to face communication with your teachers! I dont have the option for this as my bills outweigh what I would get from Austudy etc. That leaves off-campus study as my option.
The two of these options that I investigated were Swinburne astronomy online, which offer up to Masters by coursework. I noticed that there are people on this site that are doing or have completed degrees and seemed to enjoy it. The other option is JCU, which offer the same as Swinburne, but with a research component and go all the way up to PhD. I'm going for JCU as it gives me that option of going "all the way" if I want to. Friends of mine who have done on-campus astronomy research have mentioned that several areas are not lab based, and more computer based (modeling, analysing spectra data etc), so I assume that these areas could be done at the research area off-campus.
Never-the-less, I'm starting with a garduate certificate. If it doesn'e kill my love for astronomy with the added stress that academic life brings, then I'll continue. Either way, I'll keep you posted along the way.
Hope that helps and good luck. Looks like we are both in the same boat!
Best,
Ralph