I have thoroughly enjoyed reading of your adventures Chris !
Not surprisingly, there are a shortage of telescope shops here in Cairns too so I had to resort to ordering my new QHYCCD Polemaster from HK.
Of course, the skies were clear as a bell while I waited for that to arrive and then turned to cloudy and rainy, then full moony with the moon rising early and staying up all night so I haven't had much chance to practice my PA.
I did attempt it once in the garden with my laptop on a camp table, cheap $8 folding chair from K-Mart and the D600/tripod/Star Adventurer and Polemaster but had zero chance of finding Sigma Octantis with the fullish moon. Just random screens of stars on the laptop with no particular pattern standing out ! I'll be taking a screen shot and Plate Solving it next time so that I can at least see if Sigma Oct is even on the screen
It was made worse by my youngest son (18) and his girlfriend hanging around and asking questions like "why can't you just point it away from the moon" after I had already explained that I had to do the PA facing due south and on seeing the template for Octans on the laptop screen in the Polemaster software (without any stars being in line with the template naturally) asking "Is that the Big Dipper?"
Andy