You're right Kevin but, although I reckon "Oz" is adequate location info, I'm no good at formal phonetics. The way most in Oz (including me) would pronounce PLAD it would rhyme with BAD as sung by the Battlefield Band in Bad moon arising; I take it that would be a short "a"

Recently there was a docco on Oz telly, hosted by John Clark (of Fred Dagg fame) about the origins of the Oz accent. It was a real hoot and used a particular sentence to indicate accented differences in accents;

"Ask the master to pass a banana."

Cheers, Rowan