Don't get me wrong, I think the Herc is one of (if not the) most successful aircraft design in history however, when defending it (and a C17, C130 mixed fleet) recently I was surprised to be told by a Herc pilot that he felt it was rapidly becoming less and less useful as kit military kit got bigger and that it was time to ditch it in favour of something bigger like the A400M.
My point is you can hardly complain when your new, modern and quite large helicopter wont fit in the back of your old and small (relatively so in modern terms) AT.
And how Air Self Deployable would they be in the region? In NZ yes but I cant imagine they would get much further; Whangerei to Norfolk Island shows 500+ Nm which I would think is a bit of a stretch. It's a genuine question though as I have never flown long distance in the region, are there other possible Island hops to get you to Fiji, Timor, Vanautu and other previous 3 Sqn haunts?