Hello,
I was in a similar predicament. All the databases I created were in MS Access. I wanted to make the switch to Mac, and was a bit disappointed to find out that MS Office did not include Access.
I did a little research and found filemaker. It’s a powerfull database tool. I believe MS Access may be a little more robust with end-user usage, and other advanced query language. I’m not sure how advanced/complicated your MS Access databases are, but for me, filemaker could handle any of my MS Access databases.
I find filemaker to be more user friendly, and actually more fun to use. You can find a few good deals on filemaker pro 7 on ebay (under $150). You can also get more advanced versions of filemaker, but they tend to cost hundreds of dollars.
I believe appleworks is more a suite of applications. Not nearly as sophisticated as filemaker, in which you actually create databases.
Hope this helps…
VJ