Strangest (and strangely good) stays in Australia

Steve Madgwick Steve Madgwick
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In a world of increasing franchised flops and cookie-cutter hotels there are interesting and infinitely Instagrammable accommodation alternatives out there. Here are the strangest, yet strangely good places to stay In Australia. Ever considered staying…

1. On a pole

The Pole House has been one of the most photographed holiday homes in Australia since it was built back in 1978. Since then, the sleek Great Ocean Road one-bedder has had an extensive makeover with retractable floor-to-ceiling glass walls and a glass balcony balustrade added ensuring a view down at least Lorne on a clear day.

 

Life on top of the great pole, 40 metres above Fairhaven Beach, is warm all year round, thanks to a floating fireplace, the star of its seriously sexy interior.

2. In a cave

Jam B&B Coober Pedy
The surprisingly cool cave rooms at Coober Pedy’s Jam B&B.

When summer temperatures reach 50 degrees in the Opal-mining, Wild-West town Coober Pedy, don’t dare touch that air-con. There’s a broad range of partially or fully underground dug-outs (old/extended mines or custom dug) on offer that hover around 23 degrees all year around.

 

The town’s ‘shotel’, The Desert Cave, has 4-star Underground Rooms that aren’t as close-in-around-you as you might think, thanks to effective ventilation. For the claustrophobics in your group, there are some equivalent above-ground digs.

 

Stays such as the well-appointed and homely furnished Jam B&B give you more of an idea of how locals live, with self-contained 1, 2 and studio rooms available along with a generous shaded communal area complete with cactus nursery and BBQ.

3. In a lighthouse

You’d be surprised just how many people want to live out a lighthouse-keeper fantasy. Meeting this demand are an unexpected number of revamped lighthouses that have popped up as coastal accommodation options.

 

Perhaps the most delightfully remote of all is Cape Borda lighthouse on Kangaroo Island’s south-west coast. The charming self-contained stone cabin offers solitude and unparalleled wild Southern Ocean vistas.

 

More roomy is the windswept Montague Island lighthouse keepers’ cottage, nine kilometres off the NSW South Coast town of Narooma. Included are five bedrooms (circa 1881) and your (the island’s) own penguin colony.

 

More… 5 of Australia’s brightest lighthouse stays.

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4. In a tree house

Love Cabins tree house Wollemi
Our kind of tree house: Love Cabins, Wollemi, NSW.

This interpretation of the word ‘tree house’ won’t necessarily tally with your childhood memories of a few pieces of wood dodgily nailed to a backyard tree.

 

We love the luxe Love Cabins treehouse above Wollemi in the New South Wales Hunter Valley for its fireplace, its kitchen and wall-to floor windows that reveal a beautifully bushy valley view below.

 

Plenty of exposed wood and rough-hewn floor boards and rafters totally add to the ‘living in a tree’ vibe. Also on the 600-acre property, are the mysteriously named ‘enchanted cave’ and ‘love tee-pee’.

5. In the Air(stream)

Notel Airstream hotel Melbourne
Trailer park chic: Melbourne’s Airstream-filled Notel.

Not to be out-Melbourned, Notel sees Jerome’s tents and raises them five sexy, sleek, super-shiny silver Airstreams in a kitschy trailer park that started life as a car park.

 

Each 31-foot caravan is surrounded by its own recycled pallet deck, with obligatory single cactus, overlooking abstract art splashed across high walls.

 

The interior’s ultra-clean white and coral pink lines are interrupted only for a queen-sized bed (with Aura linen) and minimalist but cool accouterments like well-stocked bar fridge and spacious, Malin-and-Goetz stocked ensuite.

 

You may appreciate the open-air spa after a night out in nearby Flinders Lane too.

7. With the animals

The Pole House, Fairhaven
An overnight safari in Sydney’s Taronga Zoo.

As a kid you must have dreamed of roaming around a zoo at night. Well, someone was listening, given the number of places offering sleepovers now. And we’re not just talking sleeping bags on the floor either.

 

Canberra’s Jamala Wildlife Lodge gives you in-the-face experience with cheetahs and lions from your room – separated by toughened glass, of course. Its 7-roomed African-themed uShaka Lodge comes complete with its own pool, spa, tropical gardens and a room-length shark tank.

 

Sydney’s Taronga Zoo claims perhaps the best city glamping views going currently; the harbour and cityscape unfurling before you (from some of the tents). It’s not quite five-star but certainly family-friendly; with wooden floors and comfy beds. The after-hours animal activities will be the fam’s fave.

 

More… The ‘Big 5’ zoo sleepovers – roar and snores you can’t ignore

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8. On a slow (or no-go) train

Glass House Eco Lodge train carriage
Sleeper: Glass House Eco Lodge’s Victorian train carriage.

Do you prefer you train sleepover moving or still? For the former, three nights on the Nullarbor-crossing Indian Pacific or a couple on The Ghan up the Red Centre should sate you.

 

For those who prefer to reflect on the Golden Age of Rail sitting still, check into the Glass House Mountains Eco Lodge’s cosy Victorian rail carriage. Its dark-stained wood and long-gone-green carpet, and separate library carriage, takes you steaming back to the age, while a practical kitchen, modern bathroom and air conditioning keeps you rooted in the 21st Century.

 

There are plenty of other options around the country; you can stay in a 1917 Caboose at Hanging Rock in Victoria’s High Country, which is set on five acres, perfect for unplugging.

9. On a paddle steamer

If archetypal Australian experiences are your thing, then a wood-fired paddle steamer trip down the Murray River will get your wheels turning. The proud PS Emmylou cruises down river from Echuca with overnight space for 18 guests.

 

While she looks very 19th century, Emmylou was actually built in the 1980s with most of the creature comforts you’d expect in a retro-steamer. Disembarking for a Murray-side campfire among the redgums is a highlight.

10. In a castle

It’s time to get medieval? Well, at least sleep in a medieval theme park. The kids will lose their stuff at Kryal Castle, a few kilometres east of Ballarat.

 

Naturally there are a number of royal-named rooms including queen and king suites, all reasonably self-contained with free wi-fi. There’s a medieval village within the castle’s walls, but our bet is the jousting tournaments and sword battle between the knights will keep the young ones’ attention the most.

 

One more you can’t resist… Sleep with the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl 

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Steve Madgwick

Steve Madgwick

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This scenic Victorian region is the perfect antidote to city life

    Craig Tansley Craig Tansley
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    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
    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.