Don,
Thank you very much for your message, but sorry to hear that you will not be able to attend the MoodleMoot next February.
However, your idea of using Skype (or IChat) to join us here in Hakodate is a great idea. Perhaps you could even do a presentation via Skype? By the way, Skype now makes it possible to share screens, so doing a presentation from Melbourne could be quite possible. What do you think?
By the way, the deadline for presentation submissions is just 11 days away!
http://vle.c.fun.ac.jp/moot2010/