[David Stephensen[_2_]]

I followed all of the instructions on the suggested page, including removing
US English as a possible language in the Office 2003 Language Settings.

I edited my normal.dot and set all styles to English Australia. I set the
default language in normal.dot to English Australia.

Even after all this, when I start a new document it says US English.

My workaround for each time you start a new document (which does not make me
admire Word very much): Do all of the above for your language, then start the
new doc, type one character, ctrl+a (select all), ctrl+space (remove all
character formats), ctrl+q (remove all paragraph formats), then release your
selection. Now the doc is in the right language, as long as you never delete
everything. If you delete everything it reverts to US English.

If you create a doc template with existing text, use the above method, but
make sure the last paragraph of the doc template is not blank. The last
paragraph in a dot will always revert to US English if it is blank.

Please try this and let me know how you go.

David