I would usually travel from manchester airport here in England,i was wondering how much flights are from there to anywhere in Australia ? Are they very expensive ?

Beth, welcome to the forum and whilst Manchester might get used for international flights over the channel, most of our flights from Oz to England use London (Heathrow I expect) as point of destination.
Have you shopped around with some of the internet travel agents, kayak.com being one that springs to mind but you'll probably find a heap of english based ones as against Australian based ones that we deal with here.
Flightcentre also probably have a UK branch and you'll easily find out whether you can get an Oz bound flight direct out of Manchester, is it cheaper? or head on down to London first.
There's also a number of budget airline options that could be of interest to you, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines > Home to HK and then look at say Jetstar - Cheap Flights, Low Fares all day everyday from Australia's newest Cheap Fare airline HK to Oz, China Eastern Airlines are oft mentioned as having cheap flights and Welcome to airasia.com...Now Everyone Can Fly... are in throes of developing budget services between Malaysia and England and Malaysia and Oz.

And Tiger is currently offering $40 flights from Perth to Melbourne - so you might want to look at into Perth out of Sydney itinerary - think about where in Australia you want to go

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Lis Moving to Australia

I have just been to the travel agents, from manchester to sydney one way flight is £506. Manchester to Heathrow to Hong Kong then Sydney.

The prices certainly go up a bit for one way and heading into peak season.
I can recall people getting returns of about 550-600 quid through China Eastern or some Chinese carrier.
Have recently seen a couple of guys going London - HK with Oasis-air, then to Singapore with Jetstar and on to Australia for under 300 quid, but they probably booked a while ago and when there are specials on.

Even Tigers standard fares have risen, and they probably will some more if Oil keeps going up - hit $100 the other day for one particular variety, but then US$ is down and will probably go lower.

it depends on when you travel. I normally just go through some price comparison sites to get a general idea of the cost.

have you checked http://www.travelsupermarket.com/tra...aspx?package=4?