I did not find there was high demand or high salaries for a programmer knowing Node & RoR in Australia 2 years ago. There were programming jobs, but they seemed to be mostly IT department style jobs. The job boards were dominated by recruiters and staffing firms so it was hard to figure out what the positions actually entailed.

It seemed like lower level tradesmen such as tilers made as much as programmers, and higher level tradesmen, like master electricians, made significantly more. All forms of tradesman seemed to be more in demand than programmers.

Perhaps things have changed significantly in the last 2 years?