I am heading to Sydney soon and have booked BA from LHR to SIN in PE, and then taking Scoot the rest of the way. Given that BA wanted close to £2300 for a return PE fare, and only £1200 to SIN return, plus around £600 return SIN-SYD-SIN with Scoot in ScootBiz (which I believe is roughly equivalent to PE) for only a slight inconvenience I am saving £500. It is another possibility for you perhaps......

Or try AF's Premium Voyageur to SIN via CDG then try ScootBiz. Another option I looked at was KLM to KL and then AirAsia onwards to SYD.

Hope you find a good option.

Have a look at BA to Tokyo (NRT) then QF to SYD...if you need a night in NRT there are many hotels within 10km of NRT that have very good rates and free shuttles to/from the airport, I stayed in The Hilton Narita three days ago, booked online at YEN 6,000/night about USD $70....

Royal Brunei were offering very cheap Business Class fares late last year, around A$3700.0 round trip MEL-LHR. Ex SIA B777s, a bit 'tired' on the inside but not a bad trip, stops in Brunei, then to Dubai and London, additional costs would be the MEL-SYD-MEL sectors, either Virgin or Jetstar are pretty cheap.

jetstar are grim..........

feb 2012 flew lhr-hel-bkk with Finnair, stop off for a couple of days, then bkk-syd BA....on the way back syd-sin with Qantas...stop off before flying via hel to lhr with Finnair. All for £2450 return. Business and club,. fantastic value

Just done QR business class PER-LHR & return and am very impressed. I struggle with air travel being sybaritically inclined, 6'5" and (unfortunately) cheap wine and champagne disagree with me.

QR was great. The bed is not the absolutely 180 degree flat bed but at about 170 degrees was very good for sleeping. Food is really excellent. They had a Californian chardonnay that was so impressive that on my return I ordered some from the winery. The 1974 port is rather special. Their 777-300ERs are great. The A340-600 is the usual French vertically challenged small toilet noisy and wearisome cheap accountant wet dream.

My usual haunts are Thai 1st class and SAA business. I don't like Emirates business class because it is not very pleasant and their first class cabins are a bit isolating for me. Their lounges though are excellent. There are some negative stories about the current Doha terminal issues but they really are not that bad.

I reckon Emirates 1st class and QR business are pretty close, and if I had to make a choice it would be QR.

If Emirates has a new A380 terminal at DXB as vfenext states, does that mean that the eternal wait in a long line at immigration is a thing of the past?
I'll never do SYD/LHR/SYD again via DXB......so inefficient and unnecessary after a long flight especially at 2am!

I would imagine that the Emirati would provide a higher level of service to an all Emirates terminal. But on the other hand if you've got 10 or more aircraft with potentially 490+ passengers on each arriving at the same time ... There are 20 gates at the new terminal.

Many will be direct connections, not needing immigration screening but it still could be quite messy.

Try Cathay Pacific ... If one might be into, as I am, Cantonese food when one is offered a choice of 2 starters and 4 main dishes, whilst being in the cheapest of economy seats ... well :)

...and Hong Kong is only a few miles off the 'great circle' between London and Sydney. A great circle is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere.

Why anyone would go through the Middle East is beyond me.

There's actually not much difference between the various routings in terms of great circle distances . The great circle linking LHR and SYD is about 17,000km. The great circle distances for LHR-HKG-SYD, LHR-SIN-SYD and LHR-BKK-SYD are all within 200km of this. LHR-DXB-SYD is about 17,500km - less than an hour's extra flight time. Factors such as connecting times, weather, winds and the actual routes flown (which I believe are rarely great circles) will make much more difference to the duration of the actual LHR-SYD journey time.

It will often be cheaper, may sometimes be faster, and will rarely be much slower. Why would you not consider it?

Brief update - over the last couple of days, a huge amount of availability has appeared on the BA site for Avios-only flights LHR-SYD. I'm guessing this is because the whole "post-March" reshuffling of code shares / routes has been sorted out now. So it looks as though I might be able to get a companion voucher flight after all, although the number of Avios required has rocketed from what it was a couple of weeks ago. :{

The revenue management systems for flights in/out of Australia have gone crazy over the last few weeks. All sorts of amazing deals are popping up as the airlines individually wake up and catch on to what is happening. I haven't seen things this crazy for years.

Count on more surprises and turbulence (no pun intended) over the weeks to come as various airlines realise that they have been left behind in the game. The Emirates/Qantas linkup, and the games played by the clever players, have really shook things up.