1

Ask your travel agent what they can do as researching it is not so easy. However if you are prepared to take some of the budget flight one ways in combination with a ticket to say KL this could be the most economic way. Bullit train would be from 90$s one way.

2

Have a look at Air Asia from Gold Coast to Beijing. Can be got on a single booking as a FLYTHRU flight with a transfer in KL.

3

HSR from/to Bj/Sh is Y555 for 2nd class; Y935 for 1st. Check ctrip for flights and depending on when you book you can often get economy for less than the 2nd class G-train ticket. I prefer the train because the overall time is about the same as the total time to/out of the airports (if there are no delays) while the trains always leave/arrive on the minute.

4

Hi dianne2!

Welcome to TT!

Look for an open-jaw ticket outbound to Beijing inbound from Shanghai. I'm not an expert in Australian webs but I know you can look for it in the web of Zuji. There must be others too. Kayak is a popular one but doesn't have an Australian version... Use the multi-city/multiple destinations option to look for open-jaw tickets.

You can also take a look at the fares of Air Asia out of Gold Coast. In that case, you need to book to separate tickets; one from Gold Coast to Beijing (you need to change planes in Kuala Lumpur but you can book it as a FLYTRHU flight as westwood pointed out in #2) and another one from Hangzhou (a city roughly 180 kms away from Shanghai) to Gold Coast (you need to change planes too but you can also book it as a FLYTRHU flight).

5

Hi

Check out air china , china southern and china eastern flying out of Australia
There are a good deals going at the moment. These airlines have hubs in China where thy fly into and connect to other cities
Certainly worth a look

Cheers

6

I use this for cheapest airfares. Then book with airline or Expedia Etc.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

7

I would also recommend an open-jaws flying into one endpoint and leaving from the other.

I suggest you look at mainline airlines as well as low-cost carriers. In the event of irregular ops, mainlines can still reroute you or put you on alternate carriers, with LCC's you are stuck until they decide to put you on one of their planes, and they have other downsides such as paying for baggage, meals, etc. I've never found Air Asia, once the bottom line was calculated, to be much of a savings into/out of China. For reasons outside the scope of this thread or forum, I have reason to believe Air Asia may be heading for some trouble in 2013 and would hesitate to book far in advance on them.

Definitely check out the Chinese airlines, even though they have their warts. China Southern often has good fares from Oz, connecting through its hub in Guangzhou. Also look into Malaysia Airlines, I managed to find a good Beijing-Brisbane and Sydney-Beijing round trip on them (via KUL) in the past. Qantas is usually quite expensive. Also Singapore. Sometimes you can get a deal on Thai via BKK. If you can find something to Hong Kong, that's also a possibility.

8

Thank you all for your suggestions. Greatly appreciated.