If you intend going the sand route, you can purchase this from any hardware store or garden centre (eg: Bunnings, Mitre 10 etc...); ask for playsand, it's much cheaper than buying it from a petshop and you get about a 25kg/l bag of the stuff. You can also purchase a pool filter sand which is much finer and lighter in colour.
Sand would then need to be washed/rinsed until it runs clear. Some people put it in pillowslips and put under tap or hose until the water runs clear from the pillow. Or decanting sand from one bucket to the next using running water.
Once sand is added to the tank (only need a bare amount, approx 1-2cm to cover the floor; no need for sand dunes!); this can take a few hours to couple of days to settle (it becomes cloudy). Ours have only ever taken an hour to couple hours at most; other people's sand have taken a number of days (it may be because they had really fine sand or needed rinsing more).
A gravel/siphon cleaner can be purchased from petshop (the gravel head attachment can be detached and is included with some siphons - looks a bit like one of the vacuum heads!)
Sand will go up the siphon when waterchanging/siphoning, but it's easy to enough to bang it gently as you're siphoning and it falls back into the tank.
Sand price should be about $8-$12 at the hardware store (a large bag)(taking a guess based on some of the Aussie posts I've seen); siphon/gravel cleaner can range from $15-$30. Try and get the fatter tubed ones if you can. We have a thin tubed one and a fat tubed one. I've found the thinner ones don't have a very good suction rate especially when trying to suck up waste/axie poo (it falls back down)
Salamandra Enthusiast
