Tony,
You need to become familiar with the brighter constellations, then you can gradually work your way around to the fainter ones. A planisphere is a great tool to show you what constellations are in the sky at any time of night and day of the year.
The Skymaps website is also useful- you can download a monthly chart and target objects. You need the Southern Hemisphere Edition towards the bottom of the web page.
http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html
I also have some free maps (Night Sky Objects) and target objects if you wish to download them.
http://sites.google.com/site/southernastronomer/
Binoculars are handy for scanning the sky and locating clusters and nebulae. You can then try to locate them with your telescope to get some fanatastic close-ups.
If you do your viewing pre-midnight, the darkest skies occur after the Last Quarter through to about 3 days after the New Moon (about 10 days each month). Outside this time, the moon makes the sky very bright and it is harder to see dimmer objects. The sky gets fairly dark about an hour after sunset.
Have fun with the new scope!
Regards, Rob.