Good luck fellas but the Australian airline "management" have very thick skulls and HR are worse... with a type of arrogance and nepotism that's sadly prevalent in many other regions of this business. Fierce jingoism is still rife too, throughout Asian majors but that won't last much longer. The writing was on the wall for along time, over this shortage!
I haven't seen so many pages of Jobs Available on the AFAP site ever, in my career. Says one thing - no pilots are being trained up to cover growth, let-alone cover retirements (BA; VS; LH; US majors etc etc).
All the Middle East (not just the Big 4) are still screaming for pilots and are very short, while Ethiopian and Turkish delight open up more vacancies...(Korean continue to advertise :-) ) the list goes on and China seems the only place willing to "raise the bar" for Terms and Conditions.
Yes EK are taking prop-guys onto B777 and it is causing problems in training issues etc, so that has now moved the pressure onto an Airlines Training mechanisms more so, having to cope with such inexperience levels than they had for granted, previously.
It should also put pressure on HR Departments to background check and thoroughly undergo logbook checks again (most don't even do this!), as there is a huge increase in fake logbooks prevalent right now, taking advantage of the vacant cockpit seats.
Good reading on here and interested to hear others stories :-)
Happy landings.