You can't be that time poor or you wouldn't have got over 2000 FT posts. If your status mattered to you, you would have identified at least a couple of months beforehand that your travel plans were not going to get you over the line. You could have found a day when you could have done an MR. Failing that, with family pooling you could perhaps have persuaded a brother or sister to do the flying for you.

As it is, you'll just have to decide whether to shell out $300 for a lounge membership and resign yourself to slumming it in the seats at the back of the plane. FWIW, I think the Lounge product (at MEL and SYD) is so disappointing that I'd almost prefer to sit out in the main airport where there are better food/drink options and more interesting people to watch.