I live in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area, and have found it kind of hard to meet local trans folks just to socialize.
After attending a trans support group, and being on a couple of trans-related panels, my "local trans friends" list was still hovering near zero. So a few weeks ago, I decided to start my own Meetup.com group and see what happened:
Miramar-Hollywood Transgender Meetup (http://www.meetup.com/Miramar-Transgender-Meetup)
I'm pleasantly surprised to see that we now have 15 members. A recent lunch meeting was a small success, and a pot luck is in the offing.
I'll let you all know how this works out over time...
The Sydney group on meetup is fantastic "Sydney-Transgender-Friendship" with get togethers every few weeks. You'll probably need a critical mass of a few regulars though so people feel more comfortable showing up.
Best of luck.