If anyone can help me out here I would be very grateful.

I have never bought a RTW ticket before so please bear with me here

I am considering whether or not it is worth buying a RTW ticket even though our final destination will not be the same as our departure point. (I assume you can do this and just have an unused return back to our departure. If not then the whole thing is screwed anyway!!)

Why am I doing this you may ask... well we are shipping lock stock and barrell from UK to the land down under and thought we would take in some places on the way. This is why I thought a RTW ticket may be more economical than multiple tickets. To clarify we will be going west and not via Asia.

OK, onto specifics...
First off we haven't quite decided on economy or business yet.

As to places to visit the route goes something like this...
Rio de Jeneiro > New York > Toronto > Las Vagas > SFO > (Drive to LA) > HNL > Fiji > BNE (being our final destination). Looking at the rules etc, this seems to be the only route to avoid back tracking etc. So I guess that is a 4 continent ticket.

One of the issues I seem to have is getting to Rio. My options seem to be:
1. Fly BA to Sao Paulo and then onto Rio OR...
2. Fly from UK to Madrid and get Iberia direct to Rio. So....

Looking at the spreadsheet so kindly offered to us, if I am reading this correctly then option 1 would cost £1,389 in Y or £4,549 in J. Option 2 would cost EUR2,349 in Y or EUR5,899 in J. Do I have this correct?? I would obviously have to get from the UK to Madrid though.

Given trhis scenario, can anyone please comment on it and if I am looking at this correctly and is there any other way I could do this.

Presumably, I could still use the ticket to book flights from Brisbane west upto 12 months from booking and then I could purchase (or use miles) a single back to Brisbane from wherever?

Finally, what would you guys recommend in terms of FF programme. I am curerntly with QF but have no real status and only around 30K or so miles. I was thinking AA??

Sorry for the length and thankyou in advance,
Mark.