Long Haul Flights

fifeken

And the British and Irish Lions Rugby Union Tour is in June and early July which will bump up prices too.

mad_rich

It's a good idea to look at the websites of the airports you will travel to and from to give you an idea of who flies where. Or Wikipedia, eg:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Airport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Airport

There are no direct flights to Oz from Europe at the moment. Most people go via the middle-East or Asia.

As well as the airlines above, you could look at BA, Thai, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Virgin. They all compete, to some extent, on the 'Kangaroo Route'.

Given your location, it would seem sensible to fly from Heathrow. All the airlines mentioned fly from there, and it's a very competitive airport. You might just find something cheaper from another airport, or Europe, but given how close you are to LHR, I wouldn't even bother looking.

There's no substitute for putting the time in, searching across a range of dates on a dozen websites. I would certainly be looking at Expedia, and maybe Ebookers + all the individual airlines' websites. You can get a good overview from http://matrix.itasoftware.com - particularly if you're looking across a range of dates and airports, but you can't book there. So if you see a fare you like, make a note of the exact flights you find. You can then usually persuade other booking sites to replicate the fare.

Depending on when you intend to book, it's worth signing up for email newsletters from all the relevant airlines. THere's bound to be a fare sale of some kind on one of them...

LadyDee

Thank you mad_rich for such a lot of really useful information and advice.

And thank you everybody for your helpful replies, all of which is being carefully preserved for use in my search.