Ed,
Some us do outreach nights perhaps once a year, usually for a school or college as you might call it in the US, and ideally the students from the science classes as basic astronomy is taught as part of physics by some schools in the last two years.
In the city centre, sydney observatory - its main interest is as a historical building and museum - is open many nights and I think this deals with a lot of the people just curious for a look at the moon or bright planets; its location is as badly light polluted as Manhattan so there's not a lot else to show.
In addition one university in Sydney occasionally hosts a huge public astronomy night, complete with serious lecture and as many scopes as they can muster from the amateur community to deal with a crowd that can run over 1,000.
Part of the problem is our weather in Sydney. It can have wet or dry cycles lasting as long as 7-11 years and right now we're in the midst of a wet cycle for 3-4 years - we have had very very few suitable nights for observing.
Alex was very lucky last week to have what looked like an overcast afternoon clear up well enough after dark.
We occasionally do have parents posting here looking for a scope for a child, though admittedly I can only recall 2-3 over the past few years.
That said, my little boy is only 18 months old and already recognises the moon and some stars ... Regularly points at the moon each evening and tries to say "moon". Safe to say he'll have a scope sooner than most
