Congratulations! I know how hard it can be. Unfortunately there is no beer at Jaques' Station, but I'm sure you'll be able to quench your thirst with some other beverage available at the bar
Cheers mate, I appreciate it! Man it felt good to finally arrive. Once I'd reached the Conflux my motivation increased again and I wanted to crack on, though I tried to do plenty of scanning on the way. Found three new Earthlikes and numerous water worlds (annoyingly a bug on the Xbox means you can't scroll back up the 'Congratulations CMDR ... first discovery of' box but I bookmarked the locations of the Earthlines and two systems that had twin water worlds.
After arriving at Jaques I took a pop over to Colonia Dream to improve the scanner and add a DSS, then headed off out towards one of the other nearby nebulas to do some detailed scanning and raise my million at Colonia. After an evening's trip I got back to Jaques' and was flabbergasted to see I'd earned 4 million credits (what a difference an ADS and DSS makes, presumably coupled with buff to exploration data payouts!). The icing on the cake was that also took me from 92% Pathfinder to Ranger exploration rank.
The relevant screenshots with the bank balances on are below. (As an aside, I subsequently found myself in the curious position where buying an AspX and fitting it out with the best FSD I can get at Colonia Dream would mean it still didn't have the range of the Sidewinder I'd journeyed over in! Don't think I've got the appetite to Suicidewinder back to the bubble and journey over again just yet, so I'll maybe just concentrate on trade, hauling, and fairly local exploring in the Colonia region for now! - EDIT: I later found a 5B FSD at Dervish Platform, which will do nicely for now).
Thanks again for all the encouragement and advice folks have given, both on here and on Discord!
Mark (CMDR Gilmorril)