i'm getting my moto L's in 3 months and i'm looking at the cbr's as well. only the cbr250rr was officially imported into australia, all the rest are grey imports. apparantly the 1990-1993 models are the best as they have all the new chassis suspension etc but after 93 they were restricted to less power. also look at zxr250's (these are sometimes called zx-2r but all of them that have this written on them have aftermarket stickers) , these have upside down forks etc. and rev to 20,000 but i'm not sure how reliable they are. pm me if you have questions, i've done a bit of research in the 250/learner market looking for bikes myself.
lethal_john what aprilia do you have? i could be interested.