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When women travel to Greece, they pay about $7600 for a donated egg and an in vitro fertilisation procedure, a third of the price to go through similar treatment with a donated egg in Australia.

Many women also make the trip because in Australia they are unable to receive donated eggs that cannot be traced.

Sydney reproductive scientist Denyse Asher, who works exclusively with women who need eggs, last year sent more than 90 couples and single women to Greece, Spain and South Africa for donations. Most patients were under 50, but one 53-year-old who went to South Africa had just given birth to a boy, Ms Asher said. Fairfax Media also knows of one women in her late 50s who became pregnant.

Comedian Mary Coustas, 49, raised the profile of older women travelling to Greece for egg donation after she gave birth to a daughter, Jamie, in November last year following miscarriages and the stillbirth of another daughter.

But some Australian fertility specialists warn not knowing the identity of donors could pose ethical and medical problems. In Australia, women must find a donor known to them and pay all medical expenses but are not allowed to buy eggs. But in Greece, young women are paid 1000 euros ($1500) to donate and many do it to make extra money for their families.

Ms Asher, who runs the Bondi Junction clinic Donor Eggs Australia, said the ''draconian laws'' in Australia and particularly NSW meant women often had no option but to travel overseas. In the 13 years she had been sending patients overseas, including young women who had undergone cancer treatment or started menopause prematurely, about 360 babies had been born, she said.

But Kee Ong, a fertility specialist at Monash IVF who does about 50 donor cycles each year at his Gold Coast clinic, urged women to consider finding a local donor rather than travelling overseas.

Monash IVF can import eggs from the US-based World Egg Bank at a cost to patients of about $20,000, or some of Dr Ong's patients find their own donors through the online forum Egg Donation Australia. In NSW, a central registry stores information about donors and babies born from donor eggs or sperm.

''We do not encourage the use of overseas donors as they do not satisfy legislative requirements and the most important thing is the unavailability of identifying information of the donor,'' Dr Ong said.

Gynaecologist Nikos Kanakas, the director of Embryoland in Athens, one of many clinics in the Greek capital offering egg donation, said he had seen an increasing number of Australian women in the past five years.

''We have many happy families in Australia who have come to our clinic for egg donation,'' Dr Kanakas said. Under Greek law, women can access IVF up until they are 50, although it is suspected some women hide their age to seek treatment.

Dr Kanakas said women in their 40s and 50s were not designed to be having babies. ''But you cannot say to a woman at 41, 42 or even 45, sorry you cannot have a baby,'' he said.