The NYT is $23/month and I live in Australia. I'd be happy to pay them a dollar or two and buy an issue containing a known and limited set of articles from a particular date, but a subscription is irrelevant to me and I would bankrupt myself if I paid to subscribe to every newspaper that paywalls me.
I agree that it has become hard to buy single issues in the digital world. I have some digital subscriptions, and would be happy to pay a bit here and there for one-off issues.
You used to be able to buy the daily NYT printed edition in Canberra and Sydney at the very least. I’d actually be pretty surprised if you can’t still do it.