Aside from the sim flying we’ve been doing in Wisconsin, perhaps you want to “fly locally” rather than in the Australian outback?
You can add your own location in the locations.txt file. For example, gedit into the file and add an airport field locator (eg, KSFO) or perhaps “Home”.
Home=lat, long, absolute elevation, position
Then start the sim with an “L” command such as sim_vehicle.py --map --console -L Home
Alternatively, if you are comfortable with C++, you can change the default coordinates in sim_vehicle.py itself and not have to use the L command. (You might want to back-up the file first.)