A couple of years ago I hired from Basair at Bankstown Airport, the Sydney GA field. They did the neccessary ground training, local area familiarisation and checkrides and took me over to the nearby CASA office to get my Oz licence. The basic licence is VFR only to which you can add complexities such as retractable, vp prop etc if you need them. UK IMC and IR privileges are not allowed on the back of your CAA licence and getting any instrument privilege at all is hard work and expensive, I think. However that situation was changing and may well have changed.
Basair do have a website, I don't have the url but a search should reveal it. Try emailing Darrin Ward, CFI at
[email protected]
.
The webisite is the latter part of the e-mail address @basair.com.au
You need a full day for the ground study and checkrides, because the airspace around Bankstown is very complicated and busy. Navigation is also checked because much of the country has very few features.
Nevertheless, excellent flying. make sure you do the Sydney low level coastal vfr route and fly around Sydney Harbour -- getting ATC permission is usually easy.
I remember prices were a nice surprise compared to the UK.
Email me if you want any more info