It seems like if you're in Australia and have pre-ordered on Steam, you'll have to wait until 7pm on release day before the game unlocks

No it should release earlier than anywhere else, at midnight release day Australia time. This is what I'm going by - http://www.designntrend.com/articles/62509/20151010/fallout-4-bethesda-game-release-date-pc-vpn.htm.

Yeah, release is synced to midnight EDT EST only for North America. Everywhere else except Asia, it's midnight local time.

Edit: Eastern Standard Time, not Eastern Daylight Time. We set the clocks back on Nov. 1.

So we should turn off our internet for November 9 due to all the Australians spoiling the game for us.

That's what I thought, but Steam is currently advising the game will unlock in 1 week, 6 days and 6 hours, which would be 7pm on the 10th of November.

And before anyone says, using a VPN to unlock the game early in your territory will not get your steam account banned

I heard they don't measure accurately per region till the last day or so.

no because we will be too busy playing it to spoil it for you. but its also nice that for once us aussies and kiwis get to spoil stuff for americans for a change

Ah fair enough then. I'd be devastated if I had to wait until the evening to play!

Well that's pretty cool. AEDT is 18 hours ahead of LA, CA. So normally we'd be waiting for 12.00am Pacific Time which would be 6pm Sydney Aus time. So by the looks of it well be able to activate it at midnight, 18 hours earlier than we normally would be. Due to Fallout 4 being available for preloading (https://twitter.com/bethesda/status/658705616177860609), we should be able to start playing at midnight.

i probably wont be playing till either 6am(which would assume i went to the midnight release and i download the rest of the game) or about 3PM, which would be the other case in which I have to go to town and pick it up and get home than download it. Either way, i will be glad to just have that damn PBE in my hands at last.