Stuster
You should get the mrs to wash up a little bit more :lol: (but dont tell her I said that!). I believe that Trois Pistoles is available in Oz now, along with most of the Unibroue range. I definitely agree with you that the recipe is a bit too complicated, I think that most good belgians are fairly simple recipes. I dont recall the spices or hops being too prominent, it was a decent dark strong ale (though the bottle I had had a metallic twang to it).
I would go with some pale malt, maybe 300g of dark crystal, 150g pale chocolate, maybe 150g carafa III and about 850g sugar in a 23L batch. Bitter to about 30IBU at 60 mins with some hallertauer or something, and add some coriander seed and some other spices at flameout, along with maybe 15g of tettnang.
Use the Canadian Belgian yeast if ya can get it and aim for a gravity of around 1085 (as I think that a finishing gravity of 1020 is way too high for a belgian, maybe 1015 or even 1010 would make it easier drinking).
If ya wanna get really inventive, use some dark invert sugar that ya make yourself, but for your first attempt, keep it simple, and see how close you get, try and identify area's where the taste differ's, and then try and improve those area's.
HTH
Trent