Oceania House Hotel♡

Guest review

9.0

It's a beautiful old house. Very spacious. Care taker was very helpful. Own beach.

Guest review

10.0

The location was superb and very quiet

− More communication is needed when you first arrive to let people know someone is meeting them with a sign so you know what to look for.

Relaxing and quiet.

9.0

Location and history.

− There is so much potential. Deferred maintenance of grounds.

Perfect Getaway

10.0

Beautiful estate house full of history. Rooms were clean and well kept. I loved the oceanfront location surrounded by all the greenery. There were also complimentary bikes and kayaks available for use. Special thanks to Jodie the groundskeeper who was such a delight to be around. She made me feel extra welcome and well looked after.

What a shame! This house is charming but lacks adequate maintenance and resources for its guests

3.0

The space available for what I didn't like is limited, so additional information will go in here. Oceania House once the Clunies-Ross home, certainly exudes charm, has a beautiful outlook to the bay, and deserves its heritage listing, but is dysfunctional and more like an expensive under-facilitated, under maintained hostel in the way it presents for its clientele. The available meal catered for, on application, for us at the beginning was a very basic fish and rice dish in a cardboard container and not Malay style curry as expected. If the government acquires property of significance (the surrounding "botanical gardens" for instance), it has an obligation to maintain it with suitable funding and effort if it is to be used as a selling point. Any serious application for preservation is not even close.

− The serious lack of appropriate, urgent and ongoing maintenance lets it down significantly, making it unworthy of the room rates or a high score. The large grounds need essential maintenance and more than one person looking after them and the house. The $15 per bag additional fee to cart bags other than hand luggage from the airport to the ferry as there’s no room on the bus is a rort. The entry hall is very grand but smelt musty. The bricks around the patios and entry are irregular, many dislodged and unstable and are a potential a trip hazard. There are 4 family rooms with ensuite, two more are doubles which have a shared external bathroom. A double room with a shared facility is expensive. The shared bathroom creates a bottleneck when showering or toileting collide with other guests and there is no alternative. The fan in the bathroom needs replacing as it rumbles, scrapes and rattles like a charging infantry. There seemed to be no guest laundry available. The kitchen is completely unsuitable and inadequate for the number of guests potentially staying. The stove is a small, two hotplate electric plug -in, kept in the cupboard. It is way too small for 12 guests having breakfast or any other self catering meal together. There is only one toaster, and one microwave which is inadequately powered to be shared. There is not enough cutlery, crockery or glasses to go around and the chairs and eating tables are a hotchpotch. The large bedroom doors are enormous (and charming) but the squeal and thud for example, in the Sidney room, when opening or closing it is enough to wake the dead and could be fixed. The advertising includes the so called botanical gardens as an attraction. They are in a major state of neglect as are the derelict buildings within, and the falling down perimeter walls, with signs placed on them stating “beware: danger of collapse” (and they are falling down) or non-existent in places. It’s full of weeds, bamboo and overgrown vines, and vigorous figs.

Exceptional

10.0