or is it just the way the currencies work out?
The AUS has been higher than the USD for a long time, so they should be cheaper here, not ~30% more :0
We normally get the "we have to ship them all the way to Australia" BS line but it's just as far from Italy to the US as it is to Aus. Heck I reckon Mouser is such a large customer UPS/Fedex almost pay them to do the shipping.
Is there a way to get around the price problem by having someone from the USA buy then ship to you
That would work, we'll see how things are after the dust settles. I've got some LPC code I wouldn't mind porting across, but it's not a priority at this point and I have other things to work on.
Rob