You can call your broker and ask them to get the market makers to give you a price. You won't get a good deal though as they usually put up a wide bid/ask spread, but it still might be better than doing nothing.
Yes, you could short the stock if it is available for shorting, however, would suggest you discuss the mechanics and cost of this with your broker. One broker I know was charging over 3% for stock fees and because of the high leverage of options, this could run up to a quite significant amount especially if there is a buy and sell to close the position that creates double fees.
I would also ask the broker what sort of margin they would require for shorting the stock and ask them if owning the call option would be taken into consideration. There are usually interest charges on shorting the stock.
Lack of decent liquidity is why I ended up steering away from asx stock options and moved into index options as the problems of getting a fill when it was just the market makers and me for that particular option. I traded a lot of option spreads which made it even more difficult for liquidity.
Converting to shares does open up downside risk that is not there with a call option.
