Over the last three months I have assembled a lot of information about buying console and PC games online from Australia, much googling link clicking and wasting of time (you can tell I'm not that busy right now!)

Get some of the money back
Firstly you can get some of the money you're spending back by using a pretty cool site called buckscoop, basically they get money via affiliate links and give some of it back to you. The most important thing to do is use a different browser for this site to avoid issues with cookies and scripting, the site suggests a number of options.
www.buckscoop.com.au

Bargain Hunting Sites
There are many price information, matching and ways to get information about the cheapest prices for games, the consoles themselves and many other items. After all of my testing I have found the following sites are worth looking at:

Economical Gamer: the forums are pretty dead but the main page has a lot of up to date information - the right top section labelled 'Bargain Spotters' (usually very current) and the left section labelled 'Spotted Bargains' (can be a little old) tend to be the most useful.
www.ecogamer.com

Whirlpool Forums: Some of the most active forums for PS3 and Wii gamers in Australia, a good place to find recent deals on systems that people have got (usually with receipts). Also a good place to ask "where's the cheapest place to get xxxx" and get a reasonable answer a lot of the time - eg: I got Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (Platinum) for 28.95 by doing this.
This link takes you to the overall gamers lounge:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?f=8
There are also platform specific sections if you click the group button at the top of the page.

GameCafe: a price search engine, sometimes seems to be a little out of date but at the very least it's a useful reference place to get some idea of where things are sold.
www.gamecafe.com.au

Places to Buy
cdwow: cdwow Australia is a cheap site for buying games but not if you are in a hurry - do what I do and try to keep two or three unplayed games sitting there ready to go, that way if there's a delay you won't get caught short! One big advantage of cdwow is that all prices include shipping making comparisons much easier.
http://www.cdwow.com.au/

Play Asia: Play Asia was a good place to go when the aussie dollar was strong, not so strong now so it's not so good. Well worth remembering when (if?) our dollar recovers. It's a great place to get more "unusual" hardware - I got quality foam backed DDR mats from them, and when I say quality consider that I weigh over 100 kilos and with intensive usage they last 6months to a year!
http://www.play-asia.com/

Other places recommended by various people I know:
www.gameskart.com.au
www.cheapgames.com.au
www.dvdcrave.com
www.gameswarehouse.com.au

Buying From Stores
Hey I know I said online but I'd just like to make a few quick points.

Game and EB have now restricted the hell out of their price matching policies, must be in the same shopping center, must be in stock, you must stand on one leg when asking, etc. Given that their normal prices are always more expensive than the big general retailers (like Target, Kmart, Big W) I wouldn't bother any more except when they have super specials on a particular title.

JB Hi Fi often has cheap prices on certain items but if you're buying a system beware the stupidly overpriced HDMI cables.

Conclusion

Hope something here is helpful to someone out there!

And always remember how much your time is worth to you, is it really worth stuffing around for 3 hours to save five bucks? Or to put it another way, is it worth it when you could have spent those three hours playing Wipeout HD?

Mr Staypuft

For my other articles go here:
http://www.xomba.com/user/slewis68au