Yup.. I know - I'm also in the Southern Half.
I used to get a min ping of 350mS, but since we've got some new cables I'm getting a min of about 160mS to some EU servers. I'm surprised that WA has such lousy pings, even to the US.
What you should do (as what I did) is find out who controls the fibre links to US or the shortest route to the EU (this might be via India), and then change your ISP (network provider) to the one that has a 'direct' connection to these people.
As you might find that some ISP's are 2 or 3 levels down (sub-letting) on the connection hierarchy and have shitty ping rates.
Also some ISPs have fast (priority/non 'throttled') links specifically for gaming, you might want to find out about this in your area.
