Whist a fair few support techs move on there is a career in support. Particularly in large companies there is a tiered support structure. Tier 1 seems much like you describe but if you excel at tier 1 you get promoted to tier 2 (normally with the associated pay and benifits), and after tier 2 there is tier 3 which are kind of like managers (but they actually do work), these guys earn 50K and have fancy titles like "systems deployment manager".
http://www.hays.com.au/salary/pdfs07/Information%20Technology.pdfnavigate to page three to see the going rate for support techs in Australia.
There are entire coprorations that have a dedicated business in providing tech support like CSC which large mining companies like BHP outsource their IT needs to.
If this kind of structure is not for you there is always Insulting (consulting) which if done well puts 50K in the low pay range.
There is money in support so long as you know where to look
