Russian Visa Help!

[angusgreene]

Hi all,
We're 2 Australians currently in Almaty, Kazakhstan. We're looking at crossing Russia to head to Finland, possibly with a detour to Georgia for a week or so. We've been operating on the advice that the best way to go is a transit visa for Russia (because we couldn't apply for a tourist visa outside Australia). With this in mind, we downloaded forms, got all our paperwork in order and went to the consulate this morning in Almaty (apparently Tuesdays are the only day they will look at visa applications).
We were met with a brick wall in the form of a woman who said that we weren't able to get a transit visa (even if we were to forego Georgia) and that we must come back next Tuesday with different forms, hotels booked for every night in Russia (we'd been planning on camping) and then be prepared for a further 2 week wait while the visa was processed.
We're now pretty concerned, because we don't want to be in Kazakhstan for another 3 weeks.
We're wondering if anyone has any experience with the embassy/consulate in Astana? We were thinking that perhaps we should just go to Astana with all of our paperwork and try for a transit visa there, going straight to Finland, via Moscow and St. P'berg, not heading to Georgia. Does anybody know if there is a particular day at the Astana consulate that allows visa applications?
We've emailed David from stantours, but haven't been able to get much info from him, so we're keen to see if anyone here can come up with some advice, because we really need to get some form of Russian visa!
Thanks in advance,
Angus