argon39 wrote:

[3] Take the wings off, crate it up and ship it.


That's what I'd do. The Pacific is too damn big to cross in a small
single, even if you have adequete ferry tank capacity. Too much chances
for something mechanical to go wrong that would not be much of a
problem over land, or to run into weather with nowhere to land as
alternate, etc. Ditching in the Pacific will probably kill you.



[3] This option seems the most sane, but there are major
disassembly/reassembly costs and after that there are additional costs
of inspection and certification by the Australian authorities.

If you're going to register it as an Australian plane, you're going to
have to go thru a bunch of bureacracy anyway. Taking the wings off a
172 and putting them back on is not really all that too terribly
involved of a thing to do. The hardest part IMHO would be packing
everything up securely so that it's well-protected inside the
container, which will likely get some pretty rough handling.