I atended my first users meeting last month, and I am new to Joomla.
New to Joomla: meaning I know nothing about Joomla except for all the great reviews that I have seen on the net.

In a past life I have done secondary school teaching, medical scientist, and IT sys admin, and databases and I know a little of C and Java. Now I want to get my teeth deep into PHP, Apache, MySQL and Joomla. But I am a little bit scared of the very thickbooks, this week I got my first book of joomla 1.5 (by North), this book would be like the Joomla New Testament because it easy to read.

I am planning to perform the first implementation by December 2009
Wish me luck

yes - good luck!
i'm sure you'll be fine with the Melbourne crew to help out...and the Bible!