[lpetrich]

Another nit to pick: as to the US probe landing on the Moon, I think that the first US probe to make it there would likely be a flyby, as the Ranger spacecraft had been in our timeline. The later Rangers got closeups by crashing into the Moon and radioing back pictures as it approached.

Australia as an advanced country is interesting, but landing people on the Moon may have been a bit too expensive. I think that a more likely direction would have been what the US, the Soviet Union, and the ESA have done in our timeline and yours -- send automated spacecraft farther and farther, competing with other nations that were doing so.

I think that Australia may have been doing what Japan has been doing in our timeline -- investing heavily in automation and industrial robotics -- because of a shortage of cheap labor. So automated spacecraft would be a good proof-of-concept, especially automated interplanetary ones.