You say " to impatient to wait for a clearance". How do you know that he wasn't concerned about how he was going to hold outside an invisible line in the sky?
He had no DME. How would have you held OCTA in that case?
Very simply. I would have just turned 360 degrees at that point. A nice rate one turn, over low terrain/coast, with plenty of lights of towns visible in nearly every direction and relativly smooth flying conditions. That would have eaten up about 4 minutes, by which stage, he would have had his clearance delivered to him.
Was "going to ask him". Are you now going to confirm he was never actually asked if he wanted 7000 or 9000? Why wasn't he given this option?
This is not new news. He chose to continue on his original planned track before the co-ordination between the relevant airspace controllers had been conducted, which the biggest hold up was Sector 1 in Sydney. Are you now inferring that controllors should be making operational decisions for pilots, and that we are incapable of deciding which route we should take without being asked at least 3 times?
Did you note that BASI never mentioned this important point? If he had been on a radar frequency the pilot would have been told nearly 30 minutes earlier he was heading in the wrong direction.
He was, essentially, OCTA. Yes, if FIS5 was equipped with a radar screen, he probably would have noticed that he was off course. He wasn't in the area of responsibility of any other area. Are you inferring that controllers should be looking out for errant aircraft outside their areas of responsibility?
Where does it say that ATC are responsible for the safe conduct of a flight? I am pretty sure the last time I looked (Someone can probably quote me the reference, I'm to lazy to look myself) it said that the Pilot in Command was the person responsible for safe conduct of the flight, from startup to shut down. He wasn't under positive control, he was being offered advice and information.