Gary paints a pretty grim picture for the weather prospects for the eclipse in North Queensland in 2012. Personally I would not be quite so pessamistic.
In the Cairns region, November is generally thought of as being the buildup to the wet season rather than full on wet. And tropical cyclones are very rare as early in the season as November. And it certainly is more cloud free (on average) the further west behind the ranges you go. With the winds being predominently from the south east moisture is dumped on the coastal ranges and Great Dividing range so that the air to the west is typically drier. But as Gary says, sometimes the weather system are so large as to be inescapable.
A good guide to the climatology can be found on Jay Anderson's eclipse weather site:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~jander/...tse12intro.htm
The cloud statistics chart puts the average November daytime cloud at between 40% and 50%. But bear in mind that these figures are daily averages and the eclipse is at about 6:30 AM when the sky is consistently clearer so a lower percent is appropriate.
As one example, when I was in the eclipse path for the week either side of 14 November last year, the eclipse would have been visible at 6:30 AM on 8 out of the 10 days that I was observing.
But bear in mind that these are average circumstances and what happens on the day can be different. As they say - climate is what you expect - weather is what you get.
There is benefit in being flexible to relocate further inland if the coast weather looks dodgy, but movement significantly west is restricted without a suitable vehicle.
Regards,
Terry