On arrival at the accommodation- weary from a 3 hour drive with a toddler and post a night shift, we were met with an unclean house.
We quickly moved on from the dead flies and moths in the kitchen area and commenced cleaning and tidying up. We were more excited about the room we had actually booked the $600 a night accommodation for, which was the master with the free standing bath. In the photos it had a view and appeared worth the money.

You can imagine our horror when we walked up and found the bath tub almost half full with water and completely full of bugs and dead/hovering mosquitos. We immediately rang the Great Ocean Road Holidays number at Lorne to let them know that it was smelly and full. It was almost 4pm so the person on the other end of the line said “its late you will need to wait til tomorrow”. No worries. No bath for our toddler today. The next day I had an email from the Great Ocean Road Holidays stating a plumber would be coming, this was at 1.40pm before we were about to head out on our second day. So we rang back and they let us know someone would be coming. We put our afternoon plans on hold. At 7pm, we gave up and went to grab dinner. Toddler again, no bath and by this stage, my husband commenced emptying the bath manually as the bugs were making us feel ill and attracting more mosquitos. We spent the evening attempting to swat the mosquitos and clean up the bath.

At checkout, we cleaned the house and left it cleaner than it had been left and went in to the Lorne office to let them know. I was greeted by two women, who were not at all interested. I let them know that I had to call several times and one of the women looked up and stated “oh youre that one with the plumber- ummm yeah he didn’t have time to come around”. Whilst the other one looked at me without an apology and stated “ hmmm we don’t have notes but we will call you”. I let them know that it had hindered our plans, and we were not able to enjoy our stay and they just remained silent.

I am not one to normally complain. However, as a tired and overworked paramedic who throughout the pandemic was looking forward to my first break in 12 months with my family, I was left in tears. It was the complete disregard for someone else’s time, money and memories that left me in dismay. Not even a follow up phone call or an apology.

Considering there is also a current virus ongoing in mosquitos also, this poses a huge public health risk with stagnant water. I have photos of the bath after we had drained most of the water (still blocked) and what appeared to be tics on the towels.