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John, assuming your scope is reasonably well aligned and collimated, seeing conditions and thermal equilibrium will make up 95% of your problems...you need to allow at least half an hour and maybe more ike an hour for your scope to sit outside before it will have reached thermal equilibrium with its surroundings and give you good results. I know it's only a 90mm scope, but I recall that those scopes are enclosed so the air inside the scope has to settle down as well.
The way to check is to try looking at a star first just with an eyepiece at high power. If the star is jumping around and looks fuzzy then you can forget about good planetary views :-(
In general, the longer you can leave your scope setup out in the evening air before you start imaging the better your results will be.
Mars is also very low in the north, even from Sydney, so you can expect real problems trying to get a good view, especially from somewhere like Sydney.
An an alternative you might try setting up the scope around midnight and having a go at Saturn at around 4am. It's a lot higher in the sky and at that time of the morning you should get a better quality image.
regards, Bird
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