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Hi Danny yes you can perform an alignment without seeing the south celestial pole. The alignment process consists of:
1. Level the tripod accurately by adjusting the legs,
2. Switch it on and select the astronomical mode,
3. Set the location, date and time (it sort-of remembers these)
4. Choose 1 to 3 of the brightest stars or planets - or sun or moon -in the north, west, south or east. The handset prompts with these. After the first one is selected and aligned it will slew to the approximate location of the next one, you then use the up/brown/left/right commands to move the telescope to the target.
Even if you use just one object it will track that well enough (eg the sun, during the day). GOTO is obviously better if you calibrate with 3 objects well spaced apart.
You can for example calibrate using just one star near a hard-to-find object like Uranus or Neptune, then use GOTO to find the faint object.
After that you can point it at anything either by GOTO or by unclamping and skewing manually and it will track when reclamped.
If you can recognise just a few bright stars and the bright planets you will be fine.
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