Thanks for all of the replies in the subthread that followed my post. I logged in today (Sunday 31/8/25 ~11am AEST) without experiencing any delays.

I've been far less active on this site, over quite a few months, due to real life issues that I'm dealing with. Waiting several minutes for pages to load is indeed frustrating; however, I won't stop visiting for this reason — but, when slowness becomes a problem, I may cut my time here. I will keep persevering. :-)