Troy
the best bet is to come on over to
www.spadtothebone.com, your doing it the hard way with no instructor but A for efort if you stick with it, the closest bloke i knpw to you is in Carnarvon, not much help io know but he also runs a mail order model shop so that may help.
when you get to the SPAD home page down lod the free model simulator (FMS) and practice on that, i also found it helpfull to buy a gas car and practice driving towards me, when i started flying i didn't have problems with left/right orientation.
SPAD is the go for you as even if you still crash (and you will) the cost and rebuild time is about 1/10 of balsa