We did a Bunnings kitchen in my parents house for around $13k complete with an engineered stone bench top and a beautiful 900mm cooktop and oven. Dad and DH installed it al themselves though. Will see if I can find a pic in the morning.

Laminex Group offer Essa Stone now which is a lovely engineered stone at a reasonable price. We used Laminex Freestyle in the first house we built (in our kitchen and bathrooms) and it looked fantastic. We had a glass splash back in our kitchen which was so expensive so in the house we are building at the moment, we are using rectified tiles for our splash back instead. Much cheaper and still a lovely, contemporary look. Dad tiled the splash back in their kitchen too.

A friend from my mums group has just renovated their kitchen and they did granite overlay bench tops. Looks fab and is well priced for a 'stone' bench top.