One truly great beer is Speight's Old Dark Malt Ale.
After a work visit to NZ I emailed Lion Nathan (owner of Speight's) to say how much I enjoyed the beer and asked whether it was available in Australia. The answer came back no, but to cut a long story short a woman from LN was travelling to Melbourne soon thereafter and brought me
TWO slabs in her luggage. So I headed out to Carlton to collect it and hand over my $50 or so. Cheap at half the price. As I said, this is truly a great beer.
See our review at
http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/reviews.html
For a suggestion on how to go about making it, read the notes of my No.30 Continental Dark Lager at
http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/ourhomebrews.html
Let us know if you have any luck, as I'd be keen to give it a go, too. (I never did get around to brewing the Continental Dark Lager with an ale yeast.)
Cheers,
Oliver