OK got it working eventually.
First off it was the wrong hardware I was looking for, so bonus idiot points for me. Should have been TP-link Archer AC600 T2u NANO.
This is not supported on Linux by TP-link. I used the guide here for Ubuntu.
Original github repo for the drivers is here which also had useful info.
https:// github[dot]com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au
It helped when I worked out "(uname -r) should be replaced entirely by the kernel headers in the commands.
Thanks for the help, much appreciated. If you need more info just ask.