It helps that the seasons and school holidays are six months out of phase compared to the US and Canada. In essence, you're comparing Australian winter prices with American summer prices.
Anecdotal only, sorry. I'm sure it varies by field, and it's more about letters than longer papers. There are probably fields where Nature is excellent, but I know that there is at least one where the odds of a letter to Nature being accurate a few years later is about 50%.
Some stellar atmosphere models also add "alpha", which provides an extra knob for the abundance of alpha-capture elements. If you need anything more than that, you're doing some niche astrophysics.
Both of those would be detected as light coming back, but with different spectra and geometry, so fair enough.