The ideal scenario here would be that you are relatively avios rich and can do an open-jaw to somewhere in Asia (HKG springs to mind, but it's by no means the only option) and then return from Australia.

Are you open to starting your journey somewhere in Europe other than the UK?

How comfortable are you with ITA Matrix?

How's this for a starter for 10?



You can generally use a Chrome extension called BookWithMatrix to price this up with Priceline. NB you can actually do a non-stop HKG-SYD, which is £3 cheaper, but ITA didn't find it first time round. Image now updated.

The change fee is EUR 180, but M class is quite an expensive fare bucket and therefore I wouldn't expect you to pay anything more than that after departure as long as you're reasonably flexible as to when you travel. The fare also offers two free stopovers, so you could possibly do Beijing, Shanghai, etc. as well as (or instead of) Hong Kong.