How to work as an SLP in Sydney, Australia

I am interested in learning any useful information about what it is like to live and work as an SLP in Sydney coming from the United States.

Is it a tedious and time consuming process to acquire a work visa?
Must I first join a professional board or association before I can work?
What exactly does it mean to have reciprocity of my CCC's from ASHA?
What are the differences in the cost of living (NYC & Silicon Valley versus Sydney)?

Also - I am a bilingual English/Spanish SLP. Is there any opportunity to utilize my Spanish working with children doing speech in Sydney? Any insight from someone who has done this personally would be very appreciated.

I don't live in Sydney, but can share the following:

- 'Reciprocity' I think means that the national association, Speech Pathology Australia (SPA), will acknowledge your CCC's as being more or less equivalent to the training in Australia. You would still need to have your qualifications assessed by SPA though, I believe.

- Speech pathology (as the profession is known here) is to some extent an unregulated profession in Australia. It is not mandatory that you are a member of SPA, for example (I'm not). Most job ads will state that you need an 'approved qualification eligible for Pratising Membership of Speech Pathology Australia', but in my experience (working in schools), nobody has actually checked. I imagine it might be more important to demonstrate this for a hospital-based position.

- Speech pathologists must be registered in Queensland. No other states currently have registration.

- Sydney is very expensive, and probably the most expensive city to live in in Australia. I'm not familiar with the cost of living in NYC or Silicon Valley, but I imagine it would be equally, if not more, expensive.

Some other info you might find useful (if it's not too late already):

- To my knowledge, the education department does not directly employ speech pathologists in New South Wales. They do in most other states, however.

- In schools, unlike the USA, there are no set capped caseloads in most positions, or regulations that you must see students for X number of sessions of Y frequency.

- Until recent years, an Australian Bachelor degree in speech pathology has been the main entry qualification. However, unlike in North America, our undergraduate degrees are specialised from the start (i.e. most of the 4 year degree will be speech pathology-specific subjects). Masters entry qualifications (not requiring an undergraduate degree in a related field) have been introduced since 2000 and are becoming more common.