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D_Alex comments on Off to Alice Springs - Less Wrong
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Well... good luck, I hope it works out. Keep us posted.
FWIW, IMO Alice Springs is an odd choice. It is one of the towns that suffers from being small and isolated, without the benefit of having much direct resource oriented employment. There are some social problems in Alice Springs as well related to native Aboriginal population and drinking. It does have the benefit of being a minor tourist attraction, and the arts/crafts scene is pretty good for a small town.
My recommendation, if you want to come and work in Australia, would be Perth, which is a large, clean city riding the mining boom, or towns like Karratha, Broome, Newman and others which have huge mining/hydrocarbon projects happening.
Disclaimer: I live in Perth.
PS. If you do come to Perth, get in touch.
There has been a lot of speculation in the US media that China's export slowdown is going to hit natural resource economies hard. Australia's economy is especially intertwined with China's so I think there is some room for concern. Naive investors often swarm into a bull-market shortly before the bust. I would be worried that moving to Australia is a lot like investing most of your money into a hot-stock rumor.
For Americans who don't want to look quite so far afield for greener pastures, consider that the unemployment rate in North Dakota is 3% (lower than Western Australia). North Dakota is also natural resource focused, but mostly oil, not metal exports to Asia.
ETA: Also, this:
The Queensland government has started looking at design based business initiatives to try and offset the slowdown in the mining industry, I'd consider this a reasonable leading indicator of what you're suggesting here. Has gained very little traction though.
There's also a partition between raw project labour, and subgroups in the overall resource economy. Project based construction roles pay well with fixed terms, mining and refining sectors will slow down, gas sector is starting up at the moment (project based) but won't yield many jobs once it goes operational (can run the buggers with a handful of people).
Still has a healthy decade left in it, give or take, so isn't a bad option for short term transient jobs.