This also means (I assume) that pressing the cache ‘purge’ buttons in the wordpress dashboard is actually using the file unlink (delete) method despite that method not being selected in the plugin preferences (we opted for the GET request approach). I am guessing its not possible to purge the entire cache using a GET request and thats why its using the unlink method? Maybe the purge buttons should be unavailable if the method in preferences is set to use GET requests to /purge/
This is what sent me down a rabbit hole with debugging and explains why I was seeing nothing in the nginx access logs when pressing the purge cache buttons in the dashboard.