There's plenty of low if you're willing to go lax-pvg-syd and the same routing return. It normally books Delta LAX to Shanghai then China Eastern to Sydney. The return is Sydney to Shanghai on China Eastern and Shanghai to LAX on either China Eastern or China Southern. Of course Delta for domestic segments. Once I find the LAX - SYD flights I'd call up and get help with adding the domestic flights.

I've booked a number of co-workers 160k tickets who wanted to take family for vacation using their miles. So far no problems unless they insist on the nonstop for lax-syd. Then the price always goes up since there's only two (one on Delta and one on VA) flights nonstop and both are usually full and leave within 10 minutes of each other.

PS
I see 160k departing as soon as August 19th. Good luck.