Nice pool, but a shame that your neighbours can see you through the fence, and therefore, you get no privacy. If you were wanting privacy of some kind, bamboo, tikka plant or even lovely conifers will look quite nice, also as a backdrop to your pool area. I would also place a beautiful urn or two strategically near the pool, to add character and colour. I would finally add an order of large stones for good effect.

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.

I'm not an expert, but we have renovated a pool and made 1 big mistake. We had similar coping that formed a big hob all the way around (unlike yours). We leveled it out with paving (and then coated the pebblecrete with an epoxy sandstone-look product). The mistake? Part of the yard sloped down to the pool. Every time it rained.....all the sand, dirt and debris from down the side of my house and around the pool went straight into the pool. If we had our time over- we'd leave a small hob around the side of the pool where the land sloped down. Yours looks like it is on the downside of your house with some garden. The hob might be there for a reason.....as we learned.

With the deck being quite narrow have you considered taking the timber to the edge of the deck and not using a coping stone. This will give you a sleeker more clean lined look. With regard 90 verses 140 decking. We use mainly 140mm now, but with the deck only being 2 metres wide this may look out of place. A lot will depend on your surroundings. If the deck hasn't been started yet I would also suggest that you run your decking the short length, this will draw your eye along the lines and give an illusion of the deck being wider than it is and looking up it not as long. With regard cupping it very much depends on the timber selected and you really need to screw down rather than nail. For almost all of our decking I specify and recommend Accoya for its stability. I am sure that it will be available in Australia.