We took a while to make it official, but The Register has opened an Asia-Pacific bureau based in Australia.

To celebrate – and drum up an email list worthy of our soon-to-launch all-Australian newsletter - we want to give our Australian readers a ‘New iPad’.

The writers all have a mission to bring you even more tales from the worlds of technology and science – but now with added focus on stories that make a difference to readers in Australia and Asia.

Feel free to write to the team to let them know what you want from The Register in this neck of the woods. And do feel free to let them know things that you think we should cover, especially if they’re not public knowledge.

But before you do that, we need your email address and some other details. If you give us your email address, we'll pop you in the draw for a fondleslab and sign you up for our new Australian newsletter.

You've also got the chance to opt-in to messages from our sponsors.

The one item of fine print is that to be entered into the draw, we need your help to coin a term that we can use to describe The Register in Australia. In Europe and the USA “El Reg” does nicely. We’re searching for an antipodean epithet to use when referring to ourselves and have pulled together a list of the ones we like best. Choose your preferred epithet and, if you end up in the majority, we may pick you as a fondleslab winner. We've two to give away and will draw at random.

You can make your choice, sign up and register right here, we'll do the rest.

(If you already have a Reg account fear not, you can still enter the competition, just log in to your account before visiting the link above).

A few other details: You'll need an Australian postal address to be eligible to win an iPad. Kiwis and others around the region: hold tight, your turn comes soon. The contest opens on Monday, September 24th, 2012, closed on October at 11:59 PM on Sunday, October 21st, 2012. We'll contact the winners in or before the week of November 5th, 2012.