Thanks all for help, ended up ringing Qantas and organising booking manually, in other words going through the award itinerary I could see on the AA website flight by flight and getting the agent to build it up as a booking.
Taxes were signif. more expensive than appeared on the AA website for the same flights, but it had got to the stage where I didn't even care anymore and just wanted to make the booking so didn't question it! Any idea why the tax difference for the same flights though?
Flights are a mix of AA/BA/AB.
I see now on other threads that others are also having issues with seeing AA award availability through QF!