[AJames]

Hi all

Interesting thread. Much of the site testing in Australia were made after the WWII. Some of this information remains in the National Library in Canberra.

Some papers exist on the subject, especially on the number of clear nights and seeing. After these works, Australia was considered a generally poor observing place - mainly as the mountains here were not high enough to place telescopes. Sadly the desert sites, although dark, is deem unsuitable due to distances to get there and the gross temperature extremes - especially in summer.

1) Interested readers here should download the probably definitive ADS pdf article written in 1960 by Bart Bok on this very subject, including a few maps. Ie. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1960JRASC..54..257B

Tables I and II are especially interesting.

2) Measuring seeing for site testing appears in a note also by Bart Bok in 1959.
Ie. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1959Obs....79..219B

3) As to the AAO, you can read about the Early History of the AAO, which has some information on site selection.
Ie. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985QJRAS..26..393L

4) Also interesting in Russell Cannon's "Some comments on large telescope astronomy in Britain and Australia.", which discusses placing very larger telescope in Australia and Britain. There are some comments on the general site conditions in Australia.
Ie. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1989Ap%26SS.160..275C

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It should be possible to do your own site test, which could probably be made using daily satellite information from the weather bureau of the cloud cover at one site or another. Cloud cover, measured by either Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorders (a glass sphere burning marks on a card.) or so-called specially made gas-phase nephelometers - the latter used to measure daylight transparency (technically called; "atmospheric albedo") and distant visibility to the horizon. I read once about how one could be made, which I think was in Amateur Scientist in an old Scientific American.

Although these are important professional papers, there are many clues about general site selection. These sources are fairly uncomplicated reading.

Hope all this is useful/
Andrew

Note: Point 1 is a must to Read