Yeah, that would cost you almost $85 AUD, plus shipping...
Sometimes you can find great deals on used and refurbished Sun hardware from sun.com or ebay... If you keep looking for a few weeks before you buy, you can get a great deal on older stuff that is still great for learning.
As far as basics, a BSD system will be fine; so would a Linux box. It's when you get to administration, or more advanced tasks that it would be useful to have Solaris...
Do you think you'd be able to get your company to get a trainer system for you and your co-workers to use? We have an HP-UX "crash" box here (It's OK to crash it, get it?
) that is very helpful for learning and testing...
As a side note: I just poked over on eBay to look for Solaris Intel media - It must still be in demand, because some goofballs are paying almost as much or more than the media kit is worth for a used set! There's also one or two that have no bids on them yet...
Odd the way that works...