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G'day Deeno,
If you are happy with how your scope and eyepieces are performing, it is probably best at this stage IMO to save your pennies for the encoders. Having the Argo Navis hooked up to your scope will make a huge difference to observing as you will be able to pack in many more objects into the one night's observing, less time star-hopping and struggling to find elusive objects.
A barlow will increase the magnification of the eyepieces you have. So, a 2x barlow will make your 9mm eyepiece behave like a 4.5mm eyepiece. Unless the barlow is good quality, there will be a noticeable degradation of image quality by using the barlow. Unless you find your current line-up of eyepieces does not afford high enough magnification, a barlow is probably something that can wait.
When you have some $$ available for a serious eyepiece purchase, I would suggest you try to pick up something around the 14mm mark as a nice widefield EP. The Pentax XW comes in 14mm and is a cracker, for about $400 new. Iceman loves his 4000 series Meade ultra wide 14mm on his 10" GSO dob, so that is an eyepiece you might want to look out for the second-hand market as an alternative.
This hobby sure does get expensive....
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