Midgetboy,
Firstly, having spent quite a bit of time in YVR, SYD and MEL, I can tell you SYD and MEL are more expensive for overall cost of living...unfortunately.
I don't know what area of MEL you are looking at where you can get a 2 bedroom villa for $375/week ($1500/month), but I don't think I would want to live there...
Secondly,
404 is not trying to scare anyone, he is trying to educate you on the reality of the cost of living in HKG.
Even a studio/smaller 1 bedder in somewhere like Discovery Bay will cost between $8500 and 12000/month. If you have been looking at sizes, HKG property is a strange beast, as a rule of thumb, multiply whatever is advertised by about 0.8 and it will give you roughly the actual size. So your 500sq ft studio will turn into 400sqft, which is pretty damn small, about the size of an average hotel room.
so, say (10K/month) 120,000 p.a. /400sqft = $300sqft pa. So it doesn't have to be huge, and DB is not expensive as far as HK goes. You also probably don't want to be living in a local fishing village
Also bear in mind that you guys will probably be S/Os for 4-5 years at the current trends. I can't live in a hotel room for much more than a couple of weeks, let alone 4-5 years.