Well, if you are at all a fan of vulgargrad or gogol bordello, or even robert johnson and djiango reinhardt, then I urge you to investigate mojo juju and the snake oil merchants. they hail from newcastle, and the songstress is quite an interesting lady.
the seabellies won a chance to play at the V festival in sydney last year alongside beck, the pixies and jarvis cocker and they are very much delving into the heady depths of elaborate glitchy pop music much in the vein of arcade fire or broken social scene.
there are some great bands getting around sydney even though people tend to deify live music in melbourne, including okkervil river, cuthbert and the nightwalkers, the devoted few ( surprisingly not an emo band, as i imagined them to be), dappled cities fly and matt tonks and jack ladder are great songwriters.
love outside andromeda from melbs, holly throsby, plastic palace alice, gotye and the band he drums in called the basics, dan kelly who is paul kelly(iconic aussie country songwriter)'s nephew, because of ghosts, old man river, mercy arms had a bit of a morissey vibe going on last time i checked, the morning birds,
gelbison flew under the radar despite some wonderful songwriting, the sleepy jackson album 'lovers' is a personal fave and aleks and the ramps are one of the best live bands i've seen in a long time. the book of ships are up and coming, they're either going to be big or not, but there's some absolutely stellar music going on under that name anyway. the firekites and the instant are also from newcastle,
dardanelles, ground components, art of fighting, decoder ring, fourplay are quite an ingenius string quartet- if you can, check out their covers of killing in the name of or 2+2=5, and if you manage to get your hands on grand salvo's 'the temporal wheel' i heartily suggest you do. its a winner.
if that isn't enough fodder i must be doing something wrong, but trust me!