Well to avoid a charmless attitude (
of which aviation has its overly fair share of
) I suppose a helping hand would be appreciated if you know little of the industry.
Not sure of your age or background or willingness to move etc but there are many pathways to join an airline.
There are the cadetships which you've alluded to; they will always be around and have there appropriate place. They offer a great professional type pathway with mentoring to create a company molded aviator. They stop and start depending on the current economic environment. They will restart again one day, depends on your timeline though. Highly competitive and they would expect an appropriate level of schooling, it also helps to know someone, but that's any profession.
There's the General Aviation route within Australia, I'm sure you've read up a bit about that however it broadly involves going to a flight training provider and being "trained up." Like all training, cadets included, it involves a bucket-load of cash which these days will only hopefully pay dividends once in the industry for about 10+ years depending on your trajectory. You will require a Commercial Pilots Licence (CPL) and preferably a Multi-Engined aircraft endorsement to enable you to fly under the Instrument Flight Rules (IFR.) Iideally you'd also study and pass all your Airline Pilot Licence subjects before you hit the road around Australia as it will be hard to study and work at the same time, usually multiple different jobs other than flying initially. The road is a hard slog with plenty of pitfalls. You WILL work for unscrupulous operators, encounter a lot of egos and people trying to do you over and whilst your mates are partying in your home town you will quite possibly fly certain aggressive undesirables, lacking people skills, that can also be quite offensive to the nostrils.
Not for everybody!
There are way more opportunities overseas these days and I would encourage you to examine this pathway as the life experiences will be fantastic.
Unfortunately the music has stopped in Australian aviation and the growth has peaked, due to airlines having a seniority system you will have a very slow progression, of any sorts, for many years, I'd say decades they way this country operates.
That's just a glimpse of the Australian pathway through-out aviation here. Not coming from knowing anyone in Aviation when I started I wish there was a forum like this to help me out before I began. Although I'm extremely happy with how things have turned out, but only through extreme perseverance.
I'd encourage you to also ask questions on some of the other international forums here on PPRUNE to seek a global view and come to an opinion as to whether you will even start down this challenging pathway or not as it's not for everybody.
Hope that helps buddy
