In the end I had to take a last minute domestic flight on Jet Airways (in India) and i made sure the booking class qualified for QF miles. The miles didn't post automatically, but I applied for missing miles via qantas.com and after checking my account daily, was eventually pleasantly surprised to find 200 points in my account, and my missing 8k+ miles and also automatically reinstated.
It took quite some effort, but was ultimately worth it!
--ATD