My dark sky property is out near Young on the border between B1/B2 zones. Bortle is a moveable rating. The actual Bortle sky rating depends critically upon air transparency and transparency is especially important when you want to do anything at lower altitudes nearer the horizon. The low altitude skies, especially to the north are free of any light pollution so low altitude far north subjects come into play albeit not as good as shooting from the northern hemisphere where they are high overhead.
When the air is clear, this place is a B1 and better than skies I saw in the Atacama desert in Chile at 4800m altitude where the air is always full of dust blown off the desert. They put telescopes up there to get above the water vapour and transparency for the IR.
When the air out here is full of pollen or dust, my sky drops to a 2 or 3. Thick smoke probably drops it to a 4 or 5 depending how bad the smoke is. But when it's clear, it's sensational. The ECMWF model is extremely accurate out here so you can really plan ahead.
Once you get off the ranges out west onto the SW slopes, the summer skies become very clear and skies the rest of the year are clearer. I have lived in Canberra for the past 37 years. Canberra and all the mountains around it is just a big cloud bowl compared to out here in the Central West. Dare I say, I have too much clear sky. Unless I go to full automation, I can't really use all the clear nights.
I have owned this property since late October 2020. I have only had complete new Moon wash outs in March, June, and October of 2021. There was a new Moon around September 7, 2021. Between last qtr at the end of August and first quarter on Sept 14, I had 12/14 of the nights perfectly clear and many with stunning transparency.
Last week, I had 2 clear nights, Fri, Sat, and tonight clear, and this coming week another 3 clear nights. We have had moderate winds gusting to 20km/hr for the past few days. Consistent wind is unusual out here. We get big blows with storms but it's usually pretty still when the skies are clear. This is the first time I've seen it like this. Doesn't stop the observing, I just have to set up in a sheltered spot.
You don't need to go to Broken Hill, and Broken Hill wasn't the only place where it wasn't raining. During the 21 days from Dec 19-Jan 9 when comet Leonard was putting on the big show, I had 15/21 perfectly clear nights and 1 partly cloudy night when late twilight was clear then thin cloud came in. Even so, I was still able to shoot the comet through thin cloud. But I know from friends that south east of here Canberra and through to the coast, it was cloudy night after night and a few friends came out here to get a clear run at Comet Leonard and it's beautiful 10-20 degree tail.
Comet Leonard Gallery: https://joe-cali.com/astronomy/astro...-2/index9.html
Keep calm and carry on!
Cheers
Joe