Cacti for the great outdoors - Sydney area

Hello everyone - new to the forum and sorta getting back into the hobby a bit more lately. Although I live in an apartment in central-west Sydney, I was able to hijack a section of my parents' sloping backyard (Sydney northern suburbs) four years ago to finally build some semblance of a cactus garden, into which went the majority of my collection. The pros: nature does all the watering for me and those of my plants which are out in the open don't seem to get pest infestations (other than ants digging around under some plants). The cons: weeding between spines, clearing fallen leaves between spines and losing around 6-10 plants to winter rains as I experimented, and continue to experiment, with suitable stock.

Anyhow, I'm curious to hear what others have grown successfully outdoors in the Sydney area (apart from the usual suspects like Opuntias, Trichocereus, Cereus, Echinopsis, Cleistocactus, Echinocactus grusonii, Ferocactus). The northern suburbs of Sydney do seem to get more rain than out west (though not as much as coastal areas like around the Botanical Gardens), and my raised beds are approx 2:1 coarse river sand/topsoil, up to 60 cm high, near several thirsty mature trees and have no protection from overhead rain (except for one bed which is behind a 1m high retaining wall, flush against a garage and partly shielded by overhead guttering). So far the following have survived the winter rains from the last four years unscathed:

• Astrophytum ornatum

• Astrophytum myriostigma (slightly shielded spot)

• Mammillaria longimamma

• Mammillaria compressa

• Mammillaria hahniana

• Mammillaria plumosa (slightly shielded spot)

• Mammillaria bombycina

• Echinocereus pentalophus

• Pachycereus pringlei

• Pilosocereus spp.

• Melocactus spp. (except M. azureus)

• Notocactus herteri

• Notocactus leninghausii

• Notocactus warasii

• Notocactus magnificus

• Notocactus haselbergii

• Sulcorebutia spp.

• Espostoa spp.

I've had no luck with Notocactus uebelmannianus, Thelocactus rinconensis, Carnegeia gigantea (bar one specimen which has survived outdoors but hasn't apparently grown in 4 years), Mammillaria geminispina, Gymnocalycium spp, Cephalocereus senilis.

Hi there,

I don't live in Sydney, but I think we have a similar climate here in Paraguay. We get rain all over the year, also in winter. Temps are 20-38 C in summer and 4-20 C in Winter.
I'm keeping most of my cacti under a fiberglass roof, but also some outdoors. So it might be useful to tell you which specimens are doing well in my graden:

Frailea cataphracta, grahliana, friedrichii
Gymnocalycium schroederianum, fleischerianum
Notocactus ottonis, leninghausii, schumannianus
Echinopsis rhodotricha, oxygona
Discocactus hartmannii
Cereus stenogonus, lanosus
Echinocactus grusonii

And of the other succulents:
Huernia schneideriana, decaisneana
Stapelia hirsuta, grandiflora
Euphorbia trigona

And maybe others I don't remember for now...

Best regards
Alex