The first one is on its way (at or has left the airport) and the second one is not posted yet. It's only been a couple of days so give it a good week before any status. Generally it's 10-40 days to most world destinations during regular (not holiday) season. Australia has very strict customs, so that may be a factor.

Thanks for your help Mikep47 😎 ...... and it appears that many of the tracking sites provide misleading information/translations. For example the translation of what appears as a status of "Sent to Airline " on this sites tracking system:

http://track-chinapost.com/startairmail.php

is translated to "NULL" on the Intmail.183.com.cn site.

Unfortunately the Intmail.183.com.cn site is the one that the Aliexpress system links to !!

My package RI321497632CN has been through "Received by China Post" on 29/01/15, "Export Security Scan" on 30/1/15 and "Export Customs Scan" on 30/01/15 but now has a had a status of "Sent to Airline " with the location of Ghangzhou Airport for 3 days since 31/01/15????.
I am guessing it means that it is with the airline awaiting shipment, but should it take 3 days for it to get a flight when there are multiple flights per day to Australia?

My other Package RI323670069CN has now been through "Received by China Post " at Dongguan and "Export Security Scan " at Guangzhou both on 02/02/15 about 1 hr apart .
Thank you for advising me to contact the seller on the second item as it appears that my parcel had NOT been shipped on 26/01/15 As Aliexpress had advised. It had probably been packed and marked for shipment but NOT actually placed in the system!

Quote from Datfish on February 6, 2015, 23:49
Hi ,

My Article RI321497632CN has now had a status of "Sent to Airline" for 9 days!

Given there are 2 + flights per day to Australia should I open a dispute with Aliexpress seller now or wait a few more days??

Thanks for any advice in advance!

sent to airline does not mean it will be on airline immediately. normally it wait about 2 to 4 weeks to catch air space. no need worry.