samchng,
Yes! Sep/Oct is a great time to be coming, both for weather (generally) and activities.
In October
ASWA has it's twice-yearly Astro Camp, a weekend at relatively dark skies 2 hours drive from Perth. There's usually about 30 - 40 members with a good range of telescopes and lots of friendly people, it's always a great weekend, I've been about 13 times now. We often have international guests that come along.
I sort of lead a bunch of people that regularly go to dark sky locations for observing, usually 2 - 6 of us, on/around the new moon weekend of each month. We usually drive about 2 - 3 hours inland and camp or stay at a farmstay for the night, only one night's viewing. You'd be more than welcome to come along to that also, we have had international guests with us in the past also.
ASWA has a bunch of other activities during that time, like lunar viewing and other dark sky activities but they're all closer to the city in varying degrees of light pollution, but still a good friendly bunch of astro buffs/nuts
to have a chat and laugh with anyway.
Feel free to contact me... roger [at] rogergroom.com if you want to find out more leading up to the time.
Is your exchange just for the 2 months?
