I disagree, Australia Post is - in my experience - not very reliable.
Certainly, every post is going to make mistakes and parcels go missing anywhere in the world. However, I've lived in Germany for most of my life, now in Australia for 5 years, and every single year, I send parcels off to Germany express post (meant to take a few business days, usually takes over a month, if not two months), same with postcards abroad and in-country AUS -> AUS parcels. I understand AP is busier around Christmas, but does my old Grandfather really have to wait two months for one little present that lights up his day, when I pay for the quickest postage? The other way around (at least until the point the parcel arrives somewhere in Australia), it's much quicker. Of course, then there's that stereotypical belief that Germans are very good at planning. The German post certainly lives up to it! Maybe I therefore have high expectations of Australia Post and it's doing well compared to other Western countries. Who knows.
In general, postage of anything but letters takes longer than from a business management point of view seems efficient. And I've only just experienced the "Pending - no events yet" scenario with two of my Ebay purchases, one of which has been like that for 4 days now.
Does "No events yet" still mean the seller has definitely sent the item? Or could it also mean they just typed in a random number to fool the buyer, but never actually sent anything? Because I think that's what most of us buyers are worried about with this.
