I'm part of that Jun/Jul bump, as I, along with many others fled the tyranny of Reddit during the aborted mod protests! One thing I'm starting to understand is that most (all?) Lemmy instances are self-funded and are supported by donations and not ad revenue. I think that users need to get into the mindset of supporting their home instance financially.
Lodion posted the costs involved in running this instance here. Call it A$60/month (which will cover the 'at this point' yearly costs as well). If more people join this instance then the hardware and storage costs could increase significantly (from Lodion's post).
Just for clarity, the aussie.zone's finances etc are fine. I'll be aiming to post monthly updates such as this every month. Thanks again to everyone that has contributed, money won't be an issue for the foreseeable future for aussie.zone.
Since the post you linked to there have been many improvements in the back end of lemmy. Similarly the discovery that the bulk of storage consumption was due to a database table full of data that isn't required. Due to this lemmy is scaling much better than it did early on. We can comfortably cater for many more users on the current server.
I've also been posting a seriesofnerd updates with recent server stats and some commentary. tldr; we're in a good spot right now with no need to upgrade the server in the immediate future.
It's a very friendly and helpful environment but there just isn't much content. Whirlpool forums are also pretty good for aussies, but not as friendly and a lot of right-wingers/Q-anon type people.