VA flies LAX-BNE 3x weekly and will be starting LAX-MEL 3x weekly in September...DL will codeshare on those as well...
As for DL's early morning departure from SYD, for the "northern hemisphere" winter schedule (due to time change differences), the flight will actually leave SYD mid-morning at around 11:15am, which makes it more amenable to even more domestic connections frokm the rest of Australia...