Nothing like the beach! This place is great, unfortunately shore dumpers one end and flat as a lake at the other - but still great fun. Lots of bush walks and a lovely waterfall to walk to which has a number of water holes and a swing rope which the kids love.

Thanks everyone for your further comments. No problem about it being an old post, always nice to communicate with people about design solutions/problems. Jilly, I posted some photos on 1st January 2016, they appear further up in the post. Garden Beet Pty Ltd, and Morel Construction Ltd, both of your solutions look great, but our problem still remains the western Queensland sun which is pretty vicious on anything that will either wilt, fade or break down. It was quite a difficult challenge to come up with something that was affordable, workable and durable. I would love to have had plants because I believe they soften large "hard" exterior areas, but we have decided that we will do that with pots around the pool area. Still have that to do, even after all this time. :) Thanks everyone for re-igniting this chat. Jilly, hope you find something that works for you.

Both suggestions above are good. One house we did had an outdoor deck area which led to a pool and we put timber decking on the deck with a perpendicular timber-decked walkway leading to the pool. We then put lights in the walkway which created a 'catwalk', continuing along the deck. It looked great at night lit up with the pool lights on too! Love the stepping stones and gravel idea too.

Thanks Louise. If I take out the external door in the bathroom, I would still like to have an external door somewhere on that side towards the back of the house, so that probably means reducing the size of the bathroom so that I can put a door off the living area where it would fit best like the sketch below. In that case I am worried that the bathroom space is quite small to be a reasonably spacious family bathroom, even if I "pinch" a bit of space from the study next door by designing that room around it. (I think this would still be cheaper than moving the family bathroom to the current study, which is a larger room but would need to be retro-fitted with plumbing etc... - but that is one alternative). Appreciate any other thoughts.