One of my professional contacts is a FANZCA and I was good friends with an anaesthetic reg for quite a while, he went up to FNQ to work for one of the primary helicopter retrieval services and must have gotten lost or something, haven't heard from him in yonks.
No mate, anaesthesia is not simple, to say so is well, I could say you have an absolute lack of insight and extreme naivety, but of course you do, you are not an anaesthetist and probably know little about what they actually do. Anyway ... I won't labour on about it because that'd be a bit rude of me. Is filling a syringe with some medicine to render somebody unconscious (there are lots of them) "easy"? Yes. From a psychomotor perspective, it's piece of piss. But, anaesthesia =/= general anaesthesia and anaesthetists =/= GA bolus givers! To say that (which, TBH, it's not an unreasonable assumption, it's the only time the vast majority of people will have, or know of somebody who has, interaction with an anaesthetist) would be like saying a GP just write Rx for the sniffles (which as an aside, I hear paracetabenzofruseamyocin or whatever that was is pretty good, look it up, good for a chuckle) or an RN is a bedpan changer or beholden to the hand of the doc, or the paramedics are just ambulance drviers ...
Anaesthesia encompasses not only general anaesthesia and all the monitoring and such going along with it (you know, once the patient is unconscious and you shoved an LMA down their gob, they need to be monitored and such until they're awake! ... which in itself can be incredibly complex; somebody who is old and sick and has an ASA grading of like 9 (look, I know the most is what, 4 or 5, but they might be really sick OK? It's a thing, because I made it up, right now!
) is going to be very different than somebody who is young and healthy and such) but off the top of my head, can and does including things like pain management (including chronic pain service/clinics in some areas), working with the OBGYNs in L&D and theatre, attending trauma and MET/blue calls ... and other things with patients across the entire lifespan and "sickspan" from the very young and healthy to the very young and very sick to the old and healthy to the old and sick.
You need to be able to very quickly built a rapport and gain the trust of somebody because hey in a minute or two they need to consent to you giving them drugs to render them unconscious and likely unable to move as well, or to shove an epidural into their spine and one of the side effects of which is eh, maybe ending up paralysed, or to one of the above or something along the same lines to their friend or family member perhaps in quite an acute circumstance. You also need to be able to work and play with others well because you well, work with a lot of other docs and non-docs too.
I can't answer what they get paid in Australia, but it's likely one of the more lucrative private specialities anyway. If you are interested in doing a speciality for the money, please do not, and please stay away from anaesthesia as a speciality, lots, the most, mostestness, the most possible, like big time lots ... not even fake news. I don't know anybody who would want their anaesthetist to be the guy who was "in it for the money" ...
Also consider unless you are able to exit the public system totally that even as a Consultant, there's likely to be a not insignificant component of nights, weekends and on-call work.
Oh, and no I'm not a bloody recruiting poster for ANZCA ... I just like anaesthesia a wee bit. Hope that helps.