Establishing an identity in Australia

This has to be the trickiest part of the whole move and we would have made better arrangements prior to moving if we had realised.
Even though Ian has an Australian passport and I have permanent residency we found we could do nothing without an address. I really do mean nothing - you cannot get a phone, buy a car, register a car or caravan, join Medicare, buy a house - the list goes on.
Luckily we had visited the Commonwealth Bank in London and got advice on opening accounts so these were set up before we left the UK. The branch in Sydney were really helpful and gave us letters to carry around saying we banked with them but this was not enough.
The first time we realised this was when we went to buy the car, Pickles had to have something like a utility bill with our address on before they could sell us a car. The letter from the bank and the fact we were cash buyers simply did not fit their criteria. After much rummaging through suitcases I remembered that we had to provide an Australian address when we applied for Monty the dog's export licence and a friend in Sydney had allowed us to use his.
We returned to Pickles with the dog's paperwork and were allowed to buy the car, but of course now had to use the same address again. We phoned our friend who kindly said this was OK and we could use it as often as we liked. So we thought we were home and dry now but no.
The next couple of places were happy to accept Monty's import licence as proof of address and we joined the NRMA (equivalent to AA or RAC) and insured the car and caravan through them, but the biggest hurdle was yet to come, we needed to register the car and caravan with the RTA and they were really difficult. They refused to accept the dog's paperwork, the letters from the bank, the NRMA membership or the receipt for the car so we were stumped. As we were walking away wondering what to do we passed a Commonwealth Bank branch and went in to see if they had any ideas. They said they had encountered this before and had been unable to resolve it but the manager gave us a letter which he branch stamped and signed and we went back for another try. Initially the RTA did not want to accept this but when she could see we were not going to go away, the assistant checked the rules again and decided this would be acceptable.
What a performance!
I would suggest to anyone making this move, if you have a friend in Australia get a bill sent to their address. If you know them well enough maybe ask them to put one of their utilities in your name, if you don't feel able to do that, apply for a Coles or Woolworths loyalty card on line using their address and maybe a statement will have arrived by the time you get here. Or rent somewhere if only for a month or so. We were living on campsites which probably made things more difficult but even in a rental property it would be a while before post started to arrive with your name and address on.
We finally complete the purchase of a house this week so we can stop using our friend's address but it's been a struggle.