The best bet is to join an astronomical society and go to a night-time meeting and get a look through various telescopes.
The views from an amatuer telescope are nothing like the photos you see. You can see Jupiter and Saturn through a decent scope, (they will look a bit like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0GWpwhGdo and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1-AO...eature=related) sometimes sharper and more detailed, sometimes not depending on the seeing. You can easily see globular clusters etc. Some nebulas are visible through small scopes, but again, aren't like the photos you see, the images are black and white through a telescope, and very very ghostly in a small scope.
One way to 'see' the sort of images you see online (the lovely colour images of nebulae etc.) is to use a mallincam type setup, you could get a $1000 scope and a $1000 worth of mallincam and see the night sky in colour.
http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=2464
http://mallincam.tripod.com/id52.html
Take a look at the night-skies network to see what mallincam style viewing can do.
http://www.nightskiesnetwork.com/
http://tleaves.com/2011/04/04/star-t...ncam-tutorial/
There are a million different ways you could go, people will say to get a 10" dob, or a 4" APO refractor, or a second hand C8 or this or that, but you are lucky enough to be in Canberra, join a local group and look through as many telescopes as you can before you even think of buying one. You will meet people, get advice and get to know exactly what views your money can get you, and then make a decision.
