Hosts Pat and Greg are outgoing, friendly, resourceful and attentive.
We thoroughly enjoyed the home-cooked meals served throughout opening hours Wed-Sun at the heritage tavern next door. The chickens at the cottage produced more than enough eggs for us during our stay. (My wife enjoyed collecting the eggs from the hen house in the morning!) Pat offered to relocate the rooster so that he wouldn’t wake us up early, but we preferred to have him there (he was very well-behaved !). There were other animals around the tavern and a playground.
Pat & Greg’s work in restoring the heritage tavern and redeveloping (so far) the inside of the 130-year-old cottage shows outstanding attention to quality and a deep historical understanding of the region. Inside the cottage we found very high quality plumbing with retro parts, a good hot water system, high quality bathroom/laundry tiling, excellent electrical fittings, working modern TV with a lot of channels, air conditioner, what looks like a very effective wood-burning pot belly oven for which wood is supplied, and good quality essential gas and electrical kitchen appliances. We liked the beautiful double bed, the twin beds in the second bedroom looked equally good, and the other antique hard-wood furniture as well.
The specially treated, sanded and varnished original hardwood reddish mahogany-like flooring seems to be unique to restored traditional Western Australian homes, and it is particularly beautiful.
Greg explained that because the cottage was originally built with Government funding for the ticket master at the original Spencers Brook railway junction, expensive imported materials were used for its construction. Once sufficient progress has been made with restoring the tavern, Greg will restore the outside walls of the cottage.
We enjoyed all this and the cottage was a nice place to receive a visit from my brother and his wife from nearby Northam, followed by a great lunch at the tavern where the pork roast was very nicely prepared and included an amazing 8 different vegetables. We ate outside in the old rose garden in the shade of large trees and a big sun canopy.
Internet with my own Telstra 4G Internet USB stick worked very well showing 2 bars signal strength.