Good news: The situation with QF is now resolved, as follows:

The QF Premium agent I had been dealing with did eventually call back a couple of times yesterday afternoon and evening. On the first occasion it was simply to reiterate that stopover at point of origin was not allowed. He had done some further research, blah blah blah...

I then thanked him for his persistence, and related my story with respect to booking the same itinerary on AA, with absolutely no problem for stopover at POO. We were about to conclude our business when he suggested that if he could access my AA booking he may be able to understand how it was possible, etc. With some trepidation, I gave him my PNR, but did not expect to hear back from him.

A few hours later, he called back, saying he had some good news. He and a supervisor had eventually spoken to QF "Industry Sales", who after some discussion confirmed that POO stopovers are indeed allowed on a OWE itinerary, so I could go ahead and make my additional sector bookings.

I asked him for a point of reference for this but he could not provide one. He explained the earlier problems by saying that the Industry Sales people work general office hours and had been closed at the times I had made my previous enquiries, so could not be consulted...

Anyhow, this is certainly good news for me, and hopefully some kind of reference point for the future.

Now my decision is whether to go ahead with the AA bookings (lower fuel fines, etc), or return to the QF booking, which would yield better QF FF points (on QF sectors).

Once again, thanks to all for your helpful advice and inputs. ^

Best,

tb