That's a big ask John! Your photos are pretty good, and you have a good eye for framing the picture nicely, I reckon you would be fine at KC with the one you have.
My little digital camera takes what I thought were fairly good photos, but theres no way I can photograph birds, not enough time to focus it. It was over $800 several years ago!. I mostly employ the "point and click" method too, and don't know how to use most of the functions on this camera, so its really wasted on me.

I have been using the Panasonic tz series cameras since they first appeared. Whenever I update, I pass the older one to family. My latest is a tz30 which has a 20x optical zoom and with digital zoom can go out to as far as 168x. You get a bit of pixelation at those distances, but not as much as you might expect, and at least you get the shot that you otherwise might not have. It takes very good video as well and you can operate the zoom in movie mode on this one, which you could not do on previous models or some other brands. They can be a bit heavy on the rechargeably battery, especially if doing a lot of zooming, so a few spares are essential. They later tz40 is reputed to be even better but they use a different battery so I have been a bit slow to update until my present batteries get a bit tired. They have manual modes for the enthusiast plus an intelligent point and shoot mode, plus a heap of presets that are well labelled for all sorts of event photos. The antishake feature is a real godsend as well. You can pick the later models up new for around $300.

Thanks for the comments, Gary the camera that I currently use is Fujifilm XP I bought it for the water/shock/dust and freezeproof features prior to travelling across the top.

The zoom is temperamental and I am not happy with colour replication when looking at light shades in landscapes.

Will take the info given and have a look at the Panasonic that Brian recommends.

John