We're looking at booking a couple legs of domestic Australian flights on Virgin Australia, using Delta miles (we'll be getting to/from Australia on another airline, so the VA flights will not be connected to any other ticket).

Flights look available (well, sometimes - the booking engine is certainly acting wonky). My question is on what to expect for baggage...

I assume that we would just come under the VA baggage rules, but that's not a simple thing: VA has base flights with no checked baggage allowed, or for an extra $20 the same fare includes 1 checked bag. You can buy a second checked bag but that gets much more expensive if you don't do that when the ticket is booked. They also ding you 8 bucks for the privilege of paying with a credit card. Hmmm.

We will be hauling dive gear with us, so we will each have one modest size/weight bag to check (around 50 lbs, they generally fit within most major carriers limits for checked bags, by both weight and size - although just barely). So I think we'll be within the limit for VA checked bags (assuming we actually get a checked bag on an award flight). We will also each have one carry on size bag that's about the legal max for US carriers. I know foreign/low cost carriers are often super strict about size and weight of carry ons (part of their business model), so I'm a little concerned about that. But mostly I'm concerned about knowing exactly how this will all work going into it, so we avoid any nasty last minute surprises.

Can anyone here provide some guidance? Thank you.