Yes! Although it can be fun. (Helps if you are a masochis_.)
To minimise the number of 3500*2 change fees, you can take the small risk of checking that there are several award seats on your first flight(s), and delay starting the booking until you get to, say, 4 left. Do this by means of a dummy run for several people. I use 7, no real reason. Lastly, try and organise your trip so that the parts which have lots of flights and/or you have route flexibility are at the beginning. That way you can delay booking until some of your 'must have' seats have just been released.
You may find that many experienced users join other reward schemes to find seats that are not shown on the Qantas website, but there are traps. I recently tried to book seats on JAL shown as available, (I am a Mileage Bank member) via Qantas, only to be told, 'those seats are not available to Qantas'! If you need to go down that route, BA are generally well regarded as the most comprehensive. They will accept most dummy UK addresses for the purpose of joining.
There are even some cities which are not f;lly shown on the Qantas website. For example, Amman does not show up on the list for originating a flight. These seem to be few in number. You can check availability by dummy booking a return to such cities, from somewhere you know there are flights.
Don't forget that Jetstar and Emirates are not oneworld; a major pain for us in NZ where there is no domestic Qantas etc.
If you and your partner are both saving points, remember that there is an annual limit of 100000 for a family transfer. However I was recently told by a QFF consultant that points for a booking can be taken from any of the Pax' accounts. We didn't test this.
One last minor bonus we discovered recently. You can end in a city where you have previously had a stopover. This is helpful if visiting family is part of your purpose.
