Earliest route HKG to ADL with time constraints

[Chatswood]

I've booked my hotels and have decided to visit Macau whilst there as well (as I as in HK earlier this year) - so will be sleeping in both Macau and HK. I believe that I'll need to clear security/immigration for Macau as it's separately run to HK. I think there's a way you can do this by getting on a particular bus and only clearing immigration once on that day. This means that I'll need to clear immigration when entering Macau, then clear again when I transfer over to HK.

Correct, the Macanese have their own border controls too. I don’t believe there’s anywhere where you can clear immigration just once, unless you’re going straight to HKIA from Macau.

If travelling between Macau and HK, I still think the ferry is a better deal than the bus over the HZMB because it’s still an hour each way but you get to arrive/depart from the city centres instead of having to catch a bus out on the HK side.

 

[cambriamarsh]

An update on this (my apologies for the delay - I was away).

After taking into consideration what was said, I agreed that getting to Australia as easy as possible would be the best path to take. So, I ended up picking the 00:55 CX flight to SYD in Premium Economy (not sure if this will be worth the extra amount for no extra QF SCs (according to their tables (am happy to be corrected))).
(The prices of the 00:30 MEL and the 00:55 SYD flights only differed by a few dollars, so, I opted for the later one for extra protection.)

When I booked the flight, it failed at the payment screen, which is never fun. I rang them (from overseas) and they told me that I needed to re-purchase the ticket. Luckily, while I was on the phone to them, the ticket credited (phew). They did inform me, that I have access to the CX F lounge due to my QF status, so, let's hope that I'm there with enough time to enjoy it (it will be tight though).

My crazy routing for that day now goes HKG-SYD-ADL-SYD (as it wasn't cost-effective to remove the first part of the my next trip - it was going to cost me more to re-cost the trip with fewer flights (and therefore fewer SCs (and therefore fewer DSCs))). Unfortunately, the SYD-ADL leg is a CX codeshare of a QF flight (they wanted almost triple the amount to buy the flight with a QF number).

Live and learn (next time, I'll purchase my complex itineraries as separate trips and cancel as required.

Keep trip protection in mind, separate tickets aren't protected whereas all flights on one ticket should be.

 

[MG1]

Correct, the Macanese have their own border controls too. I don’t believe there’s anywhere where you can clear immigration just once, unless you’re going straight to HKIA from Macau.

If travelling between Macau and HK, I still think the ferry is a better deal than the bus over the HZMB because it’s still an hour each way but you get to arrive/depart from the city centres instead of having to catch a bus out on the HK side.

My flight arrives in the evening - I'd be keen on getting from HKG to my accommodation in Macau (Cotai) as soon as possible. I did read that there's a special bus service that limits it to one clearing of immigration (on the Macau side) but need to investigate this further.

Keep trip protection in mind, separate tickets aren't protected whereas all flights on one ticket should be.

The layover time in-between the tickets, in ADL (smaller airport with one terminal - domestic-to-domestic transfer as well), is a few hours. Even with an hour or so delay, I should still have plenty of time to start the next ticket. If the delay stretches past two hours, then I'll start to stress a little.