Christep, thanks for your feedback. Your point is exactly my question. As you can see both alternatives do have Australia -> North America. However, it is not direct as you mentioned.

The reason for my question/doubt is because I read in the rules (see above exception lines 70-72) that HK could work as transit, thus I thought, if I want to go from Sydney to LA in Cathay Pacific, Cathay will do it changing planes in HK, thus my question is: Would this two flights in CX qualify as a trip from Australia to the US since HK is just a transit city, and would qualify as exception described in the routing rules printed above?