Cape Kimberley Road, Cape Kimberley Tel (07) 4090 7500 or 1800 466 444 Websitewww.koalaresort.com.au
BUG review
This Koala hostel is undergoing extensive renovations and should be re-opened by the time of publication. It has rows of cabins set in a rainforest clearing next to the beach. The dorms are a bit small and uninteresting, but they are all air-conditioned. The bathrooms are being refitted at the moment, so they should be clean and new by the time of your visit and there is a small outdoor kitchen with plenty of cooking supplies plus a barbecue. The main common areas are centred on the nice small swimming pool and the bar with pool tables and heavy wooden furniture. Guests have free use of bikes and body boards. Reception and management are outgoing and friendly and will pick you up from the bus stop and organise trips to Snapper Island, which is very close to the property.
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Price Dorm bed $25 ($24 VIP) Double room $50 Cabin $99-120 Camping $10-13 Prices are in Australian dollars and are inclusive of all taxes.
have to agree totally with the other reviewer. A lot of work needs doing. Even the road sign is still the old club one and not the newer koala. come on guys, smarten up a bit! Clean out those toilet tanks, and make sure the washrooms are cleaned a lot more often than they are, provide some cooking gear in the kitchen, throw out that incredibly dirty BBQ tray. Staff were friendly, but the 'rooms' would have been more comfortable with a chair to sit on. We struck a cold spell, and nearly froze with the standard issue sheet. We checked out and went to the nearby Crocodylus. It was great!
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Padangbai
Australia
Needs some work 28 June 2005
Pros:
n/a
Cons:
n/a
Padangbai
saw things this way
Maintenance
(2)
Cleanliness
(2)
Facilities
(2)
Atmosphere
(2)
(Review ID: 10495)
Koala has taken over the old Club Daintree Resort at Cape Kimberley. Unfortunately, not a lot has been done to spruce the joint up.From a backpacker's point of view, the four-bed dorms (2 double decker bunks) are extremely small - 2 people and their gear would crowd it out. The walls are so thin you can hear people next door breathing heavily at night, let alone snoring. On the plus side, at present they get so few visitors you are almost assured of getting a dorm to yourself.The camp kitchen is very basic - it is very small, often there was a shortage of plates, saucepans and utensils (necessitating a visit to the pub's commericial kitchen to borrow something), there were no tea-towels and no areas to store food apart from the fridge.Once you cook up, there are no tables - you walk over and use the pub's verandah tables.Note that Koala is virtually the only activity down there - there are no shops, so bring all your own eats if you don't want to rely on the pub's kitchen (prices reasonable and the grub looked okay)On the plus side, the pub area was nice. had a happy hour with pretty good booze prices for north QL and attracted an interesting crowd of campers (Koala has several nice camping areas which were popular with fishermen, a few families and grey nomads in their campervans), locals from surrounding rural properties and people staying in the more upmarket rooms. The family cabins looked okay, although the twin share places were more like tents with roofs and very small.The toilet/shower/laundry block was big and in good condition.There is not a lot to do down there. The beach is just okay but nowhere near as nice as further up at the Cape and there is a 20 minute walk to a lookout, the pool is okay but pretty small, but that's about it.The staff was friendly and hard working, but here I have a caveat. Despite ringing an hour before arrival, I was left waiting at the junction of the Cape Trib road and the road down to Koala for 2 hours. I finally stopped a motorcycle (the 3rd vehicle going in in those 2 hours) and asked him to remind them. Finally an Aussie guy came out and picked me up - he was apolagetic (and on his day off) but the Brit girl on reception who was the one I phoned did not seem to think anything was amiss.A few hours later a Polish couple staggered in after walking the 5 km from the main road with their packs. Koala Cairns had phoned (or supposed to have phoned) to say they were coming. Ah well, Brit backpacker staff may save operaters some money, but they have no investment in making the place work.In all, an okay place if you want a quiet, really laid back retreat off the beaten track, but the $25 charged for the dorms is not matched by the facilities or the pickup service.
