Goodbye Backyard Privacy

Friday saw the next-door neighbours house arrive. Went to work in the morning leaving a vacant next-door block, and returning to look out the kitchen window to see a brand new house plonked, about level with the middle of our backyard. Because we dont have high fences this now means that from their front windows they can see straight onto our back veranda (where we quite like to sit of an afternoon or evening and enjoy a couple of drinks and watch the colours of the sky and hills as the sun sets)

The view from sitting height on the back veranda.

The house arrival wasn't really new news we have known since about a month after we moved in that they were planning to put a transportable on the block, and had know that Friday was going to be that day for a couple of weeks.

Since first discovering that we were going to have human neighbours (a miniature horse has live there for a while now) I set to planting a natural screen with pants from our Arid Lands nursery, these were large tube-stock, which have grown well but are still probably a few years short of being big enough to successfully do the job they were intended for.

This is a Golden Grey Mulga (Acacia argyrophylla) which was planted around 6 months ago and I plan to be the main screening plant. You can see from the clothes peg it is nowhere near the heigh that it needs to be to do its job.

I am thinking of planting some relatively short lived plants behind these (between it and the fence) to create a temporary screen until the natives grow tall enough. My thoughts currently are leaning towards giant russian sunflowers, or perhaps some sort of non invasive bamboo that would grow in a fairly hot dry climate (if one exists)

What else might be suitable? Here's the criteria: grows to around 2m (minimum), allows the natives in front of it to grow and not be permanent. I think I'm looking at at least a couple of years until the natives will be tall enough, grow in a hot and relatively dry climate, surviving on minimal or hand watering, not need supporting like a trellis.

I'm interested to hear others ideas.