I don’t choose launchers or launch sites for any payloads, but it is good to know that Australia is another quicksand trap that can delay your payload for months beyond the need date.
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Re the first Shuttle launch: I went there with friends and family. It scrubbed on April 10th, and on the 11th we went to the beach, where I got a nasty sunburn (AKA radiation burn — next time: Disney World) on my back (therefore global warming must be true, right?), so the pain kept me awake the night before the launch. The delay is what made its launch coincide with Yuri Gagarin’s flight. It may be the only April 12th that another space event took top billing over Gagarin — at least in the U.S.

In addition, we raced with the Shuttle back to Edwards to watch the landing (being rabbity-fast, we spent a 2-hour stopover in New Orleans, where instead of going into a jazz club on Bourbon Street we looked at Saturn through some guy’s telescope set up on the levy (that’s our priority, right or not), and still beat the Shuttle to Edwards to watch the landing. A fun week of driving, watching, and sunburning.