Yep, I hear ya. I got 5x ATMega8 through ebay for less than the price of 1x at jaycar
.I have not looked for robotics parts in particular here, but
www.farnell.com has some harder to get bits, I found the AVRMKII ISP through them, no-one else in oz could get me one. Not robot orientated, but they stock a lot of components that might be harder to find.