The through life costs of the F-111 were so horrendous I wonder if it would, in actual fact, have been cheaper to have gone for something like the A-7 Corsair supported by tankers, specialized rec, SEAD aircraft and maybe a squadron of AG's Maritime Patrol Bombers.  If we had gone for F-8 Crusaders instead of the Mirage the rec platform would be the RF-8 while a kitted up two seat A-7 could handle SEAD.

I was thinking along the same lines myself. The problem with the Pig is that it was really a bit too complex and expensive to commit to many tactical missions such as CAS that only needed smaller bomb loads and didn't need the high end avionics like TFR. It would have been an expensive way to bomb a company of enemy troops, an artillery battery or a column of trucks, especially if it got shot down by small arms fire prior to the days of of high altitude PGM release. In the strategic and maritime roles it was a bit deficient in range, crew comfort and bomb load, especially for an isolated country like Australia. I think that a single seat striker like the A-4, A-7 or Jaguar (depending on when the purchase needed to be made) combined with a strategic bomber with martime mods would have been a better fit for Australia.

I have to ask after all those years of you posting links to that site, are any of those models yours?