Review: Hotel Realm, Canberra | Australian Traveller

Sleek, modern, minimalist: it’s been called all these things. It’s also one of the comfiest stays in Canberra.

Hotel Realm in Canberra was one of the first five-star stays in the nation’s capital when it opened in 2008. But a lot has changed in the nation’s capital since then. Despite the fact there is now a plethora of great places to stay in the ACT, Hotel Realm remains a stylish and sought-after option.

Location

Hotel Realm is located next to the Parliamentary Triangle, within easy walking distance of Capital Hill, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery and lakefront. Hire a bike to do the circuit of Lake Burley Griffin; it’s one of the best things to do in Canberra.

Part of the DOMA Group, the stylish hotel sits within the Realm Precinct, which also includes the Burbury Hotel & Apartments, Little National, Brassey Hotel and Pinnacle Apartments. It’s near to the Canberra CBD.

the property exterior of Hotel Realm Canberra — Enjoy a luxe stay at Hotel Realm Canberra.

Style and character

Hotel Realm underwent a full renovation in 2015 to bring it thoroughly up to date with all that is happening in Australia’s so-called capital of cool. Renovations were completed in 2019, revealing a sophisticated, comfortable, mid-sized business hotel with somewhat of a 1960s spirit.

The use of industrial finishes such as concrete and granite is a cheeky wink to some of the Brutalist beauties that are dotted around Canberra’s cityscape. But the new-look hotel also has a softer side.

the foyer at Hotel Realm Canberra — The sophisticated foyer interior sets the tone for your stay.

First impressions start in the luxurious lobby, which has a soaring atrium and is clad in a gun-metal and silver exterior that allows the light to wink through. There is also a stunning art installation: an immense mobile of red squares festooned like autumn leaves around the three-storey space, which adds colour and a sense of drama.

Facilities

Hotel Realm Canberra is a DOMA Hotel that is primarily aimed at business travellers and so has a rather masculine, no-nonsense, neutral colour scheme of rich browns, tans and charcoals.

The room I’m staying in has a kitchenette, washing machine and dryer, which is very convenient over the course of my weekend stay. There is a hair salon, two spas, a heated 25-metre pool, health club and gym for all guests to use. Pilates classes and hire bikes are also available, as well as a run club guests can join for the duration of their stay.

an indoor pool at Hotel Realm Canberra — Take a refreshing dip in the pool.

Rooms

All up, there are 158 rooms arrayed around the central atrium and they all benefit from the architects’ commitment to creating spaces that are airy and bright.

In my suite, there’s no traditional wall art on display, but I don’t think pastel landscapes or moody city scenes would add to the already homely style of my Realm Suite. It has a large king-size bed, fat mattress, plump cushions, soft throw rug, leather furniture, upholstered walls and sheer, white curtains. There is also a balcony, seperate lounge room and kitchenette.

a spacious living area in Hotel Realm Canberra — Get cosy in the spacious living area.

The decor is beautiful and minimalist, the textures and colour scheme soft and varied. It’s a soothing space to chill and big enough to invite friends over for an aperitivo. The bed linen is all white, with a dark-grey throw adding personality. There are also white marble and glass tabletops that level up the luxe feel.

a lounge room with balcony in the Realm Suite, Hotel Realm Canberra — The Hotel Realm Canberra suite has pared-back interiors.

My Realm Room resembles a contemporary, interior-designed apartment replete with a kitchenette. Despite all those mentions of minimalism, I found the fit-out to be warm and cosy. The furnishings have been kept to a minimum, which means the colours and textures work to make you feel quite cocooned in the room.

Flatscreen TVs are the only things that adorn the walls in the lounge and bedroom, and they can act as wall art when not in use. However, I’m here to switch off. And I’m much more interested in sitting in a puddle of sunshine on my balcony and drinking in the views over Old Parliament House.

The new updated suites at Hotel Realm Canberra, which draw on a soft and muted palette. — The updated Penthouse suite at Hotel Realm Canberra, which is sleek and elegant.

Food and drink

Hotel Realm is tucked into the hip, happening Realm Precinct where you will find a cornucopia of restaurants, cafes and bars. The DOMA Hotel has also become a draw for foodies with its flagship restaurant, Louis. Led by culinary director Ben Willis, who was at the helm at two-hatted Aubergine for 14 years, the restaurant offers a unique take on classic European fare.

Louis Dining is all warm colours and leather lounges in Hotel Realm Canberra. — Louis is all warm colours and leather lounges in Hotel Realm Canberra.

Design nerds are also being lured to Louis for its dreamy interiors, conceptualised by acclaimed interior design firm Luchetti Krelle. Expect lazy Susans on the tables, beautiful bentwood chairs, Thonet Hoffman stools, warm pendant lighting and Missana low stools.

Louis Dining, all dark blues and gold finishes, is a Luchetti Krelle designed restaurant in Canberra at Hotel Realm — The sumptuous Louis Dining at Hotel Realm Canberra is finished with French accents.

Head to nearby Ostani Bar for a cocktail night with the girls or a laid-back pint in the afternoon. It’s known among locals as one of the best bars in Canberra for a tipple or two and offers up classic pub meals as well.

Breakfast at Hotel Realm is included and typical continental offerings include yoghurt, muesli, cereals, muffins and croissants. There is also a range of breads, juice and tea.

Does Hotel Realm have access for guests with disabilities?

Hotel Realm offers Easy Access suites, which have been designed for guests requiring wheelchair accessibility. In addition, all public areas are wheelchair accessible and there is accessible parking available.

Is Hotel Realm family-friendly?

Yes. There are several room options that can easier accommodate families with children.

Details

Best for: Small families and couples who want to be close to the heart of the city.

Address: 18 National Circuit, Barton ACT

Phone: (02) 6163 1800

Cost: From $454 per night.

Planning a trip to Canberra? Check out the other Canberra accommodation options you should know about in our handy guide.

Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.

one of the comfiest stays in Canberra