Oh and welcome gsxman. The funky roof is in stage 3 not 4a. I believe the reasoning everyone's colourings are similar is because of the limited choices we have at bunya and the extended time it takes to get through DRP. If you choose similar colours to what is already around the faster hopefully DRP will ok everything.
another thing is if the brick is already used in the area before and you can see it and you like it, it makes so much easier to choose. we did that too, unfortunately choc tan wasn't available, however the one we did end up choosing there are a couple of houses with that brick and the best thing to do is to go to Bunya and check them out. the new bricks that has been added into the list were actually pretty good and we really liked them but we couldn't imagine how they would look with the rest of the colour selection because there was no house built with those for us to see.
btw i went to bunya this weekend in the evening and there were a lot of street lights and floor lights at the entrance... it looked really good. there were a few people on the streets walking and stuff and gave a good feel of the community. i think the council and landcom has done really well in developing the area, yes not everything is perfect but it never is... but there is no other place like it anywhere close by.