Alaska-booked award travel between the U.S. and Australia on Qantas is much more valuable than AA award travel on AA/Qantas for two reasons: free stopovers and less miles required. I have a trip this month to Brisbane in business for 55,000 Alaska miles. AA wanted 80,000 for the identical Qantas flights. My return trip from Brisbane in business/first includes a free stopover in Sydney for 70,000 Alaska miles. AA does not allow free stopovers, so I'd have to pay 10,000 miles to fly BNE-SYD in coach, followed by 110,000 miles in F to fly SYD-SFO two days later, for a total of 120,000 miles. I'm saving 50,000 miles one-way by booking with Alaska miles compared to AA miles for this portion of the trip.

I've seen some reports of U.S. travelers connecting in Asia to get to Australia, but as it's something I wouldn't do myself, haven't paid a lot of attention to it. The Alaska web site says a Cathay routing from the U.S. to Australia would be 60K in business and 80K in first. I'm guessing that you'd get a free stopover in Hong Kong or somewhere in Asia with a routing like that, but just don't have the experience with the Asia routings to Australia, so that might be something worth pursuing on the Alaska forum.

Compare the redemption charts:

Alaska award chart: https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/use-miles/award-charts?lid=nav:mileage-charts&int=AS_NAV_MP_AwardCharts_-prodID:MileagePlan
AA award chart: https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...ward-chart.jsp