  Spitzer IRAC mid-infrared photometry is presented for the globular cluster
(GC) systems of the NGC 5128 ("Centaurus A") and NGC 4594 ("Sombrero")
galaxies. Existing optical photometric and spectroscopic are combined with this
new data in a comprehensive optical to mid-IR colour catalogue of 260 GCs.
Empirical colour-metallicity relationships are derived for all optical to
mid-IR colour combinations.
  These colours prove to be very effective quantities to test the photometric
predictions of simple stellar population (SSP) models. In general, four SSP
models show larger discrepancies between each other and the data at bluer
wavelengths, especially at high metallicities. Such differences become very
important when attempting to use colour-colour model predictions to constrain
the ages of stellar populations. Furthermore, the age-substructure determined
from colour-colour diagrams and 91 NGC 5128 GCs with spectroscopic ages from
Beasley et al. (2008) are inconsistent, suggesting any apparent GC system
age-substructure implied by a colour-colour analysis must be verified
independently.
  Unlike blue wavebands, certain optical to mid-IR colours are insensitive to
the flux from hot horizontal branch stars and thus provide an excellent
metallicity proxy. The NGC 5128 GC system shows strong bimodality in the
optical R-band to mid-IR colour distributions, hence proving it is bimodal in
metallicity. In this new colour space, a colour-magnitude trend, a "blue tilt",
is found in the NGC 5128 metal-poor GC data. The NGC 5128 young GCs do not
contribute to this trend. [abridged]
