Couple of node questions guys:
1) I'm in south eastern Australia: which node should I be pointing to?
2) Why? as in does it matter?
The nodes increase the propagation speed of the blocks found by the pool.
They also will attempt to submit a block, if you find one and are mining to a node, before the main pool node will submit it.
If your ping time to the node and to the main pool are similar, then mining to the main pool will be best.
If they are quite different, 100-200ms (or more) different, then mining to the node is appropriate.