My wife and I relocated to Australia from Seattle. This blog details our new house build in Melbourne. The builder we are working with is Rustic Builders, and the house is located in the new Springthorpe Estate in Macleod, Victoria.
We used steel posts on this, since we already had steel i-beams in place for the retaining wall. It should last much longer this way - and less risk of damaging buried pipes, since no digging was involved