Hi Linso47, As far as brokers went, I was Initialled trained by...

Hi Linso47,
As far as brokers went, I was Initialled trained by a full service broker, Burrells who were taken over by Macquaries, they used to run little training schools on
saturdays.
I still have a Macquarie equities & option account, and currently trade very little on it but keep it open to get the online research.

99% of my trading is online with commsec using 3 equities & 3 option accounts, using iress as the platform.

You can choose the option type yourself, the European series will have a slightly different strike price ie as an example currently with Telstra the $3.60 is American, the $3.61 is European have a look at ASX website for telstra and choose options.
You will see the series, strike price, expiry, premiums etc . So if you use a broker, you discuss your ideas of the play you are intending and ask whats the best European or American for this?
If you are trading online yourself then with commsec it will warn you that it is an European Type series that you have selected and you must agree to proceed further. As you trade online the choice is yours.

The screen grab below shows the series ie TLSQG8, expiry date, last thursday of the month in general, 30/08/2012, type Call, strike price $3.60 and the premiums $0.23
The next one is TLSS48 will be a European series as the you can tell by the odd strike price of $3.61 and the premiums are about 11 cents less as this series is in the money you cant exercise it and collect the 14 cents dividend.

TLSQG8 30/08/2012 Call 3.600 0.235 0.235 0.235
TLSS48 30/08/2012 Call 3.610 0.125 0.125 0.130
TLSRK8 30/08/2012 Call 3.700 0.145 0.145 0.000
TLSS58 30/08/2012 Call 3.710 0.070 0.070 0.080
TLSSY8 30/08/2012 Call 3.800 0.085 0.085 0.090

Do you ever get the feeling that when you tell your non trader type friends that you trade options on the stock market, and they enquire what is that, they soon get lost?
Happy trading