Great first report, mate,
!
There is so much to learn, and find, you can be like a kid in a lolly shop, wanting to try them all, and not being able to decide on which one to taste first. Still happens to me.
Galaxies can be really tricky buggers to find. M83 is not the easiest either. Its surface brightness is quite low, so we mainly just get to see its nucleus which is quite stellar-like, especially from Sydney's east. You may well have had it in your eyepiece, just not quite identified it. I've had this trouble routinely with it. When I showed it to you last time in Randwick, it took me some time to pin it too.
This coming new moon, even if you don't get to go out to a dark site, try to have a go at the Grus Galaxy Quintet, in the constellation Grus, NGC 7552, 7582, 7590, 7599. These galaxies all fit in the one field of view, and though smaller than M83, they are brighter. Their proximaty to each other also makes recognising their 'cloudiness' easier to spot.
Below is a link showing a picture of the grouping which will give you an idea to how they are placed one to another:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclo...s_Quartet.html