Dave, your item on Talking Electronics drew me back to my days in the electronics industry here in Jersey, where we had RCA the real company, designing and testing broadcasting equipments... I worked there on secondment from the Rediffusion UK company where I worked, primary within the Reditronics R&D laboratory section, until the UK government of the day, decided to break-up any large companies, and sell them off; bad days and millions of skilled electronic individuals, unemployed.
And was wondering how the surplus electronics market in Australia has changed, since I tried to become a resident back in the 1990's... to cut a long story short, I found myself competing with lots of unemployed Australians within the electronics industry, this continued for a good 6-7 years on; thus with two failed attempts to stay, not helped by personal ties, pulling me back to Jersey the Channel Islands.
Anyway, while i was staying at Oatley Electronics in Sydney, Branco the company and he's family, were very good to me and very welcoming; we went around a number of surplus companies in the area, and I was astounded at the dollar value of test equipments and parts, that seem to be close-out items; this was in the 1990-1992 period.
I see Oatley Electronics is still around, but lost contact with Branco, and see he sells a wide range of products on his web-site:
http://secure.oatleyelectronics.com//index.php their is considerable more hardware, than the kits that he used to designed, back then; as I recall, these were made into articles for Silicon chip and I think also, Electronics Australia.