Flyingemu, firstly congrats on getting thru to ground school!
I'm from the first TJQ ground school and we've just received our first full month's worth of flying allowance. My payslip says I had 87 block hours (for the February roster period) which earnt me $1022 on top of the base salary which is paid out at a flat 164 hours per month. So that example of 89 hours in the contract is pretty close to what I think the average will be.
As for overnights, well the crew that have been here longer would be better to answer that question, but I've already had one overnight in Adelaide in the 7 weeks or so I've been flying. A handful of others from my ground school have already had one overnight somewhere as well. Overnights are not something you'll see regularly at JQ by any means, but they do happen when there's shortages at certain bases and they need to call crew in from other bases to cover - or in the case of a series of delays or cancellations upline (if that's the right term?).
And catzparadise congrats to you too,
I know how excited you would be! As for the swimming part of ground school - no need to worry! You don't have to be an Ian Thorpe in the pool by any means. You'll wear an inflated lifejacket in the water at all times and so long as you can swim at a reasonable level you'll be right! You're just in the 25 person life-raft learning how to set up the canopy and pull people from the water into the raft. The other thing they get you to do is to haul a lifeless person through the water from one end of the 25-metre pool to the other, and back again (you're both wearing LJs though!) Hope that puts your mind at ease a bit on that topic!
Enjoy your training guys! You'll make some great lasting friends from it!