The AuDA (.au Domain Administration Ltd.) in Australia have enabled domains to be registered directly under the .au level (without the need for .com.au .net.au .id.au, etc) for eligible entities.

To be eligible, you need to meet some Australian presence test (which I don’t, so won’t) – The “Australian presence list” criteria can be found buried in their licensing rules and doing a text search in your browser for Australian presence.

The new domains apparently require manual intervention by Afilias to be made live and accessible with a few people finding their new .au domains failing to resolve and expressing dismay regarding the matter on twitter.