I am having diffidculty getting the Amoga to recognise the disks.
This is so called "chicken-egg" problem: In order to get the software you need to read the PC disks, you need to move some files to amiga. But how can you move the files if you can't read the PC disks in the first place?
So basically you're stuck, unless if you find some friendly local Amiga user who can write the software (XFS or messydisk) to Amiga formatted disk.
If you can't find such friendly person, you need to buy CrossDos from your Amiga dealer.