Hi Happy and Englyn, thanks for the replies.
I'm not really market savvy at all - my one attempt to "play the market" was to buy a couple of grand worth of BHP shares when they were almost $100, which are now at $64. Although I didn't lose much in the scheme of things, this early experience taught me I'm not likely to beat the markets, and something index linked is probably a good idea.
I guess a safe way would be for me to just start by putting a portion of my monthly savings into an index fund, rather than moving a large chunk of my cash savings over. That way a sudden fall won't really hurt (and would help in a sense since I'd be buying cheap).
That article recommends Barclay's ETFs. Given all the news about them cheating LIBOR recently, I'm not sure I really support them as a company, or trust them with my money. From the little I've read Vanguard seems to be run in a responsible and respectful way. I'd be interested in others' thoughts about this (from oz or elsewhere).
I don't know of any Australian sites, but I'd also be interested. There's a lot of talk on here about 401k etc which is irrelevant to us, but I haven't seen any discussion about super funds. I'm also interested in the aussie housing market. All the discussion I can find on the web seems to be petty fighting between renters hoping it'll crash (like me :-) and mortgage-payers hoping it won't.