It's also worth mentioning that you are in Australia, and the majority of active people on IRC are in North America and Europe. You might've got on at a dead time when most people don't talk anyway.
I personally use HexChat. I used to be on XChat, then went to XChat2 (aka YChan), then to XChat-WDK, which lately became HexChat. It's better than mIRC for me because I need to join many networks, and mIRC really doesn't work well with that.
Also, when you get into #AMV, ignore NME/NM3. He's pretty much constantly stoned out of his mind, and therefore rarely says anything that could be perceived as coherent...