Yes he's playing you like a fiddle, having his cake and eating it too and he's got the mentality that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It was words that keep him in your thoughts and NOTHING more. He's been stringing you along and getting emotional comfort from you while he ****s other woman and is simply too afraid to have you and too afraid to let you go. . . In otherwords a flake that doesn't love you but fears abandonmment and the pain that a full breakup entails.
Go to Australia and don't think another thought about what he meant. If he meant anything that you're hoping he meant then he would have made it clear. If you really and truly wanted to know what he meant then you would have called him back and said "What the Fk does that mean and why are you playing these mind games with me?" Instead of wondering and then posting here for us to guess.
You don't want him anymore than he wants you, you've just not given yourselves the right tools to enable yourself to become indifferent to one another is all.
then he broke up with me (didn't really give me much of a reason except that he had 'fallen out of love' and he 'saw me as a friend').
Do you see that nothing has changed?
“The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.” ~Joan Didion