People used to think the 16" Lightbridge was huge and heavy. You ain't seen nothin yet. The Skywatcher 16" is gigantic. Its heavier. The rockerbox is about a foot taller than the lightbridge. The lower OTA is about a foot taller and thus heavier obviously and because the UTA is only removable with difficulty then for all intents and purposes you have a single OTA to manhandle and lift. In effect while its not as tall in its collapsed state as a Full lightbridge OTA, its like lifting the weight of a full lightbridge OTA onto the higher rockerboxes alt bearings. Each bit of the Lightbridge is smaller and it is designed to be taken apart and put together in stages so no single lift is as heavy nor as hard to manhandle. The Ep height is also a good 7 or 8 inches higher than on the LB16!! Some will point out that maybe the Skywatcher makes up for the OTA because the Rockerbox can be dismantled for transport but let me tell you from experience, stuff gets banged around in the back of a car no matter how well you pack and I wouldn't see the rockerbox pieces with the Azimuth and Altitude motor housings surviving long without damage as the flat pack rockerbox pieces shift around. The added setup and breakdown time involved in assembling and disassembling the rockerbox doesn't appeal to me either.
However.....
I can see the benefits of the collapsible feature when one is just wheeling the scope in and out but it makes things harder for dark sky trips because it can't be easily dismantled into constituant parts for transport.
For that reason I am combining the best features of my own 16" Lightbridge with the best features of the Skywatcher 16" Goto. I already have a servocat/Skycommander/iPhone Sky Voyager Goto control for my LB16. I will be trimming the oversized round groundboards off. Adding wheels and converting the truss poles of my LB16 to a 3 strut collapsible strut system like the Skywatcher. Moonlite sell the required truss clamps and hardware for the conversion which should cost about 150 dollars
I get a much smaller and lighter 16" Goto Dob who's OTA can be collapsed for storage and quickly rolled out and extended for observing at home just like the Skywatcher.....but.....which also breaks down into much smaller more managable constituant parts than the Skywatcher for transport in the back of the car. When the time comes to make my base even lighter by remaking it from baltic birch plywood, I reckon I'll have a much easier time replicating the LB16 base (sans wide round groundboards) and transferring my servocat hardware etc over to the new base than trying to do the same with a Skywatcher base.
If I were you, with the strength of the Aussie dollar I'd be getting the LB16 servocat kit and a Lightbridge and maybe even doing the strut conversion too
. You won't have actually spent much more than the cost of a SKywatcher 16" Goto and you'd have a scope that combined the best features of both scopes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG8nOMGb3q4