Unfortunately I don't know much about shipping to Australia. What was the type of shipping called? Like Mako said, DHL (a private company) shouldn't be 250 AUD wtf.
To give you an example, I have a Japanese mailbox / forwarding service, and when I enter my friend's address in New South Wales, the price estimates it gives me for a 1200 gram package are:
The situation right now w/shipping is that there's Japan Post (Japan's national system), which includes air mail (plane), sea / surface mail (3mo on a boat w/no tracking), and EMS (express air mail). Due to the limited number of planes going to / from Japan cause of lockdown, air mail and express air mail to certain countries is unavailable or extremely expensive compared to pre-Covid.
With Australia in particular, it seems that only surface mail is available from Japan Post due to Covid, so you would have to ship through a private company if you want tracking. In the non-Covid days, EMS was a very affordable option for a lot of people. It recently returned for Americans, and the prices are atrocious if the parcel weighs over 1500 grams.
You might want to look at other websites besides CD Japan, e.g.:
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10693910
https://www.amiami.com/eng/detail/?gcode=FIGURE-058355
Note that these websites can't give you a super accurate shipping cost until the item is in stock and weighed, but large retailers generally have contracts w/private shipping companies to make this affordable for consumers, and there is no fucking way shipping to Australia should be 250 AUD when a mailbox service is giving me numbers like $52 / 70 AUD for 1200 grams.
hell yeah retail therapy.
