Sounds about right. I graduated from UQ in 2008 - I had job offers from Honeywell in Sydney ($56k) and a local Brisbane firm ($45k) but took Microsoft (US$80k). Banks and IBM were offering ~$50k. A couple friends who went to Google in Sydney were at ~$60k, those who stayed in Brisbane were generally on ~$40-$50k. 5 or 6 of us from my graduating class came over to MS that year.