@DannyHamilton: I have family who could help me in principle, but setting up a purchase and verifying that the transfer has gone through sounds like a lot of stressful work for them.

@Foxpup: Thanks for the info.  Sounds like this is a dead end.

Into a bank account in the US.  I'm in the US and the account is in Australia, so an in-person arrangement is going to be difficult to set up.

Hi, I'm interested in learning how to use bitcoin to transfer money from Australia to the US.  It's a fairly substantial sum, but completely legal.  My bank is offering me a very unfair AUDUSD exchange rate, and I thought I would look into using Bitcoin instead.  I've already set up a MtGox account, and gotten it validated.  Is that enough to keep it from getting frozen if a large sum (say $15,000) passes through it?

Could I please get my account whitelisted so I can ask this question in a more appropriate forum?