Hey Staffo...
There's a bunch of different ways of measuring octane... the USA uses MON (Motor Octane Number) and most other countries (according to Wikipedia) use RON (Research Octane Number). There's also PON (Pump Octane Number) which is the average of RON & MON.
Anyway, the upshot of this for you is that here in Australia we use RON, and your manual says you have to use at least 95RON unleaded. You -can- use higher octane (eg: 98RON) but you won't get any benefit from it, despite what the gas companies want you to believe. Don't use lower than 95RON or you'll start getting pre-ignition problems.
FYI you can also use up to 10% ethanol blend unleaded, as long as it is 95RON or better. I've run it several times without any problem, and it's usually a few cents cheaper. It's hard to find though, as most gas companies only do an ethanol blend in regular (91RON) unleaded. In QLD the only company that regularly has 95RON & 98RON ethanol blend is "Freedom Fuels", and there's not many of them around.
