I am also in QLD
Where?
where do you get most of your kit from?
I bought a stack of stuff from Jaycar when I got back into electronics about 2-3 years ago, but mostly I buy from Mouser, E14, etc. Not that I buy much as I mostly write code and design things these days rather than actually build anything.
I do have a set of boards coming soon though, all the components were bought from Mouser.
A decoder chip will give you more outputs. For example, the 74LS138 will set eight output lines using only three output pins.
But they can't be latched so normally that's not much use unless you only want a single active output at a time.
Rob