Ok, so from my above questions I will give you the full story. My sister had got a quote for Melbourne to Johannesburg for a wedding and then back to Melbourne via a week in Bangkok to see the family all in economy for about $5500 for her and her husband. I definitely thought I could give them something better so got investigating that's when the flights above came about from searching using Awardtravelr.com.

MEL-JNB brought up MEL-BKK-BOM-JNB or MEL-SIN-BOM-JNB but neither showing on the Lifemiles booking engine
JNB-BKK
BKK-MEL

First up this morning I called GE Money (I was using a 28degreesmastercard) and they said yes due to the time of the transaction it was barred for fraud protection. Guy I spoke to was very friendly and said if I tried now (about 0930 AEST) it should go through fine. So I thanked him for his time and jumped back on to the lifemiles website.

With my account showing 0 miles I had decided I would go ahead and buy the full hogg, 75000+75000 bonus for 2250USD. Credit card worked and the miles were showing instantly in my account.

I then went ahead and booked both the JNB-BKK and BKK-MEL flights as two separate bookings both on TG using minimum miles/maximum cash through the Lifemiles online engine, all very straight forward. I had been told on one of my calls yesterday that stopovers weren't possible so just went ahead with the separate bookings.

Next up was the challenge after my results yesterday. All these flight were showing in the Lifemiles engine when looked at separately just had to get them as a single ticket. I called up at about 7:30pm New York time and got a friendly agent in Will. This time I changed my tack and straight up just asked for MEL-BKK for 2 in Business Class. This then provided a 12hr break in Bangkok to catch up with the family. Once he had found that I then asked to connect on the flight BKK-BOM giving him the flight number, once that was in I then asked for BOM-JNB. All seats found and the ticket in place I provided the passenger numbers. What happened next was great as well, I asked if he had a PNR so I could check it was all correct, he actually then emailed me the full itinerary for me to read over and check, all was good. I had 66,000 miles left in my account and was going to use the minimum 60,000 but he calculated for the whole lot and I couldn't be bothered trying to change it.

The annoying bit was when it came to payment, make sure you have already set up the PIN in your lifemiles profile. It took about half an hour going back and forth till finally it accepted my pin and the payment could be made. All up about an hour on the phone.

So all up the experience was very good and it appears if you get a competent agent (compared to what I was trying to deal with the night before when they couldn't even find the MEL-BKK) it can work out. It would be interesting what the max segments are before they wouldn't say it is connecting any more but this one flight is over 3 separate days and all was good.

Also of note is that we could have also done it MEL-SIN-BOM-JNB as the SIA flights were available but obviously not showing on the front end of the lifemiles engine but the agent could definitely book them as they were all on 777 aircraft.

No ticket numbers yet but hopefully all works out and will update with total costs etc, any questions let me know.