Asian Galaxy Note 3 units exempt from Samsung's annoying region lock

The European and American Galaxy Note 3 models might be locked to their respective regions, or so it says on the boxes' label, but Asian and Australian versions don't seem to have that same restriction.
An Australain retailer has received the first batches of 16 and 32 GB Note 3 units, arriving from Hong Kong, and has confirmed that they were able to use them with an Australian SIM card without issues, and there is no region-lock warning label on the box with them.
Not that there won't be tens of ways to unlock the handset the minute it hits the XDA community, but any restrictions are annoying, so if you are bent on roaming with your Note 3, the Asian batches seem to be a safer bet.