It's no joke, I arrived in OZ with a type rating and many thousands of hours on the aircraft flying all over he globe and was made to complete 120 hours of line training which took about 4 months due to lots of trainees at the time. Still, didn't worry me, I just enjoyed the ride, wasn't very taxing so was able to use the time to get my head around Aussie 'quirks'.
I guess you just accept the overkill in training hours and make the most of it.