Good luck with NW miles redemption on your RTW and PLAN AHEAD. I have been having problems getting a flight back from HNL to BKK on NW as they have no flight available for the whole month of August 2006 from NRT-BKK. We are talking about 8 months in advance here...still no flight....business class - none....no need to mention Economy.
KE has a black out from July 20-Aug 20, 2006....applicable to DL miles, not sure about NW miles...
Other SkyTeam programs have similar offer (140K for Economy and 220K for Business). If I were you, I would definitely try to get 80K more miles for RTW Business Class....
Also, Australia is indeed eligble as part of the trip as long as there is NOT BACKTRACKING on your stopovers and it must be one continuous single direction (east all the way or west all the way) - of course transit don't count...only stopovers.