Thanks Alex, I was jus f'n around
I'm in bortle 4, I think. I was totally surprised, a fluke even
I used the optimal exposure calculator (plugin?) in nina. I think it uses the exposure calculation method championed by Joh Rista which targets swamping read noise using your current camera, filter, target and seeing taken into account, at least afaik.
I did the usual Dynamic Background Extraction (divide & subtract), Photometric Colour Cal. and ezDenoise. The sneaky part came to the stretch. I did a small histogram stretch incrementally until the core showed with good definition of the brightest stars but nowhere near swamped. I then applied a range mask that covered the bright bits and then continued with the small stretch increments until you could just notice the mask, hit undo once or twice and then redid the range mask to cover the brightest bits and incrementally stretched again. Three range mask steps, heaps of little histogram nudges.
Then it was a little contrast curve and a little touch of saturation. done.
Ok this time I'll admit I had a big smile on my face. I actually got roughly what I meant to. I started from scratch, granted with an excellent kit, in May.
Here are the (inverted) masks I used:
I have a trial version of PI and will try this on my Tarantula data, it too is very easy to blow highlights being such a bright nebula. Looking forward to seeing more of your images … you must get more clear nights then us cloud-bound southerners <insert sympathy here 
