Using Gnome ...

[David Walker]

Thanks to all the quick and helpful replies.

Getting the low hanging fruit out of the way first ...

On 18/01/2012, Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:
> At least some of the desktop environments don't actually depend on X, so
> it may not have even been installed.  'pkg_info -Ix xorg-server' should
> show xorg-server installed.  Otherwise, 'pkg_add -r xorg' is needed.

# pkg_info -x xorg-server
pkg_info: no packages match pattern(s)

:]

BTW, a couple of the mirrors don't "represent" - 404  ...
http://ftp14.us.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
http://ftp9.us.freebsd.org/pub/os/FreeBSD/
Listed here:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html

Best wishes.