Adelaide is a 'nice' place to live - if you go for quiet country towns with even more parochial attitudes to their AFL teams than Perth (a difficult achievment!). It's also got the worst case I've ever seen of 'it happened somewhere else, so it could/has happened here in Adelaide too...'
I don't ever say that I come from Adelaide - I just work here.
But to answer your question.... how often do we get away... a fair bit. Over an entire year, you might get away for 3 or 4 months of it. Not in big blocks all the time, it's mostly 1, 2 or 3 weeks at a time. I've never really added up how much time I spend away in total in a year....
We get to go all over Australia - but mostly to Perth, Sydney and Darwin. Traditionally, overseas trips are usually on offer 2 or 3 times a year - South Pacific, South-East Asia, US/Hawaii if you're lucky. If you're _very_ lucky, then there is the odd trip to Canada, UK and Japan. But no guarantee that every person will get one of those.
In terms of deciding which aircraft type you go to, I know that Nav course was 'streaming' their students fairly on - ie, deciding on their type based on ability/performance, and then tailoring their basic training as a result. I have had rumours that was/may be changing though. You always get asked where you'd like to go - it gives the instructors something to giggle about in their crewroom.... <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">