I was going to go on Thursday but decided to go on Wednesday to avoid having a similar experience to Sunfish as he always tends to choose the wrong day.
I thought it was great. A relaxed feel with less people there. I spent around 3 hours in the pavilions conducting business with many other well dressed business-minded persons, from Defence and other aviation organisations. There are a lot of innovative and new products that I haven't seen before and many advances in the ATC and ATIS areas, along with higher end Defence products that were drawing crowds of high-ranking officers. I'm guessing that it is difficult for many of them to get out of Australia to trade shows due to the restrictions on using government money for travel, so Avalon is a good chance to see what's out there. Apparently much business takes place there.
I saw many "brown people" there in military uniform, including most of the security guards and gate personnel, but I didn't see any military hardware that seemed to be aimed towards any brown people.... most was designed with no discrimination in mind.
I then headed out to the military displays which were great and there were no lines to browse through the extra large cargo holds of our biggest aircraft.
I chatted with one of the largest aircraft importers in Australia, Foxbat, who had several aircraft there, including the new Alto. There were other LSA aircraft there too, including a new "Evolution" aircraft that boasted a 165 knot VNE, a 165 knot TAS at 75% power on a 115 Rotax 914 engine. I'm not too confident on those numbers! I've heard that 145 is more in-order, but a bit of poetic licence in advertising is the Australian way. There was also a newly arrived Chinese amphibious aircraft (complete with Chinese employees direct from China) that appeared to be modeled similarly to the Icon A4, but I did hear a figure in excess of $300k for that one. I believe it was assembled and test flown out of Tyabb during the last week.
I also saw the Cirrus aircraft including the Vision Jet, new Vulcanair Single, twin and also numerous new impressive helicopters from Bell and the Guimbal Cabri helicopter.
There was building representation as private GA aircraft were arriving for the GA areas including owner associations, SAAA and also the RA-Aus, however admittedly it was a little early for some of them, although the RA-Aus and SAAA were full steam ahead.
All in all a good day out with plenty of places to drink free water from filtered water fountain trailers.