Stephen,
From my experience the night sky is a continuous moving target as far as seeing conditions, it changes from night to night , season to season and location to location but if I had to put a general magnification limit it would be the following -
Suburbs (sa 30 to 40 km from CBD ) 180 x magnification
Regional or Rural town 250 x magnification
Dark site + 300 x magnification
I don’t know if this helps as like I said the seeing conditions are ever changing phenomena. There have been some nights in Sydney where I used a 4.7mm Ethos ( 265 x mag ) and observe Jupiter in excellent detail.
I would recommend buying a powermate ( say 2 x) at some stage to give you some flexibility with your eye piece collection
Good luck !
Martin
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