Looks like I've found a solution. See: https://askubuntu.com/questions/772774/unknown-host-even-though-avahi-is-installed-and-running
I installed libnss-mdns and altered the hosts: line in /etc/nsswitch.conf to read:
hosts: files mymachines mdns4 [NOTFOUND=return] dns myhostname
resolving mdns names is now working for me.
Thank-you @lanefu. Your pointer to a solution worked, but it took some time for me to learn how to do this. Finally came across this one page that explained how to automount a share using systemd.
https://anteru.net/blog/2019/automatic-mounts-using-systemd/
This worked for me:
root@loki:/etc/systemd/system# cat zeus-raspi.mount
[Unit]
Description=/zeus/raspi
[Mount]
What=//192.168.0.160/raspi
Where=/zeus/raspi
Type=cifs
Options=rw,auto,uid=1001,gid=1002,file_mode=0755,dir_mode=0755,vers=3,credentials=/etc/.smbcredentials_raspi_01
DirectoryMode=0755
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
-----
root@loki:/etc/systemd/system# cat zeus-raspi.automount
[Unit]
Description=/zeus/raspi
[Automount]
Where=/zeus/raspi
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target