Australia was a hot territory. Jim Barnett liked his boys, but was very well ahead of his time in running a territory. There are a lot of names that were stalwarts here. Mario Milano, Mark Lewin, Brute Bernard they were massive stars here. They were well known publically.
Australia despite being remote from the US still had massive stars that came here. Dr Jerry Graham, Dusty Rhodes, Harley Race, Andre the Giant, Ric Flair, Jack and Jerry Brisco all had tours here. I'm not 100% sure if it was WCW or an another promotion, but there's a video on YouTube of THE Gorgeous George, not an imitation (and there were a lot of them particularly in the LA territory) but GG himself, which is huge because GG was absolutely on another stratosphere. At the time he was on national TV in the US, and his gimmick got massive heat. The effeminate mannerisms, the robe, the use of Pomp and Circumstance as his theme when no one had theme music, having a male valet who would spray the ring and opponent prematch with a perfume, the way he refused to let the ref touch him prematch to check for foreign objects, GG was the master heel. And he was prime time in the US.
There's often thoughts that VKM was the first to really take wrestling big time. But there was wrestling on the Dumont Network which was a US free to air Network. Then there was Georgia Championship Wrestling on TBS. WCW in Australia was as big as them for the time period. What Vince did moreso was pay local networks to carry his shows as opposed to the local territory, when you really didnt go into others territories.