Hello S/V Willow
I'm in Oz myself and a have a brand new Sony reader. I can easily download from the Sony site (nice freebies and paying). There is also a great thread which lists heaps of sites that have books for free:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43794
I have opted against the Kindle purely because I felt it restricts me to the use of Kindle only.
Hope this helps :-)