Many thx Emily for your input, much appreciated- I had to finalise the coping paver yesterday and have gone with a square edge coping paver in http://www.stoneoutdoors.com.au/Metro/Colour-Range - Portland, its a textured paver off white/with flecks of bluestone aggregrate through it - thinking I could do either a/plain concrete with scoring (lines in concrete, with possibly a long line of tonal pebbles seeded into concrete so it is all tonal and hopefully disappears and makes the pool itself feature; or b/we slightly colour the concrete a deeper blueygrey like our bricks (not quite as dark) and either score the concrete in large blocks or score it so it resembles the 500 x 500 pavers around the pool coper/edge? Hope this makes sense:) Cheers Helen

Sorry but the water line blue and white flowery tiles look old fashioned and if you're going for that kind of sandstone on the top it won't go with the terracotta tiles you have already Do like the pool and tiles that Hayda Natural Stone have posted Very nice!

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.

Thanks Fiona. We'd love to landscape the far side but sadly that is our neighbour's property and the river rock lined area right beside the pool fence is an easement that runs like a creek when we get rain so can't plant in there :). I do plan to sneak in a few more of the Golden Cane palms onto the neighbouring paddock as some have self seeded anyway- hopefully create a nice screen. I have my eye on some nice pots and two lovely wooden loungers with cream cushions, all in budget. But I'll only get them once I decide what to do with the paving area to better blend with the pool surround. I've just had the area pressure washed about 2 weeks ago so my thinking is to go with the repaint in the medium grey and hope we get 5 years out of it.