SonicAlbert said:
The first step would be to apprentice at a recording studio.
I used to give this answer also up until about a year ago or so. But now this is getting tougher and tougher to do for two reasons: a) the diminishing number of big studios, and, 2) more and more of the apprenticeships that are available at such places are being sucked up by recruiters for engineering schools like SAE and Full Sail. These schools are like the ticket agencies and scalpers of the apprentiship business, it's very hard for an "outsider" to get good seats in a studio because all the tickets are pre-sold to the agents.
Maybe the situation is different Down Under, raptor. And a little bit of networking, nepotism and patronige can go a log way to getting around the "agents"

. It sure wouldn't hurt to buddy up to these people as best as you can and shop around Albert's suggestion and see what you can get, because if you can do that, that's still probably the best way to get one's feet in the pool.
But it's tougher than ever these days to go that route. The days of hanging around the open back door of Sun Studio and making coffe runs for the engineers until they finally allow you to come in and coil mic cables are fading fast.
There is always the option of actually going to a place like SAE or Full Sail to actually learn this stuff. These places are often pooh-poohed by many on these boards, but they can certainly teach a hell of a lot better information than what is floating around these boards. And you'd have the inside track on apprentiships and job placements.
But even they will tell you, practically on the first day, that the kind of engineering job you wind up with may not be what you envision. You could just as easily wind up editing radio commercials or producing Podcasts as you could mixing the next Midnight Oil.
I'm not trying to discourage you; just trying to give you the reality of the situation.
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G.