[OSM-talk] Help with Extracting feature types and all their key=values

[mick]

I'm trying to extract major features - EG. roads, rivers, railways, etc. from a section of the map. For each feature I want to get all the "subkeys" that apply - EG. from highways: 
all types of roads for motor vehicles
Name
oneway yes/no
bridge yes/no
maxspeed
maxheight
...

keeping IDs, timestamp, user in tact.

I was using osmosis 0.40 and osm2pgsql with partial success until I replaced archlinux with ubuntu 11.10. Now when I try:

bzcat ~/Downloads/australia.osm.bz2 | ~/osmosis/bin/osmosis \
  --read-xml enableDateParsing=no file=- \
  --bounding-box top=-27.0 left=149 bottom=-32.1 right=153.9 \
  --write-xml ~/Documents/gis/Australia/NSW/NewEngland.osm

### Coastline #############################
 ~/osmosis/bin/osmosis \
  --read-xml ~/Documents/gis/Australia/NSW/NewEngland.osm \
  --tf accept-nodes places=* \ 
  --tf reject-relations \
  --used-node \
  --write-xml ~/Documents/gis/Australia/NSW/NewEngland/places.osm

the first step works fine but the second fails with argunent 12 and 10 missing.
or the output includes the ALL the points in the input file.

Pointers to a GOOD tutorial(s) would be appreciated or even a direct solution if it contains hints on how to tweak it for each section.

My health isn't to great currently so please forgive me if I've missed needed details, just tell me what I forgot to include.

mick