We recently spent a long weekend at Casa Warrandyte, and were really excited to be able to get a few days off together, let alone to be able to spend them in what looked like such a wonderfully welcoming and wholesome country property. To our increasing disappointment, the property was less than idyllic, and the problems became worse (and more comical) as the days went by. To start, our host was meant to meet us on arrival, but instead of finding someone at the property when we arrived we were greeted by an open front door (which we later discovered doesn’t actually close and the keys don’t fit it), and a property that was obviously not cleaned between the departure of the previous guests and our arrival. There was lawn furniture strewn across the yard and patio, messy children’s painting materials everywhere and a free-standing bathtub on the deck that was clearly not meant to be free-standing, and that we later found out was intentionally placed there… to be romantic? Our “host” Dan arrived about an hour and a half after we did, with a bag fresh from IKEA with 4 wine glasses (lucky, because we needed a wine at this point), and a bag of toilet paper which he went off to put in the bathrooms. One of which had a broken shower and the other no hot water. He asked if we needed anything, we did - we had asked for firewood specifically to be left for us for our arrival, and expressed that if there wasn’t any we would stop and get some en route. We were assured there would be plenty. You guessed it - there wasn’t any. We asked if he could sort that out for us and he made a phone call resulting in a promise of next day delivery, which was fulfilled. Dan was actually sweet enough, and clearly just a local that the real owners get to drop off toilet paper and wine glasses when they don’t have time to get an actual cleaner in. There was a visible layer of dirt on the floor and it plainly hadn’t been vacuumed (probably in a few visits). The kitchen, laundry and bathrooms were all of the same sort of level of cleanliness - not really acceptable. A saving grace was that the sheets appeared to be fresh. We hoped! As it got dark on night 1 we started trying to find light switches that turned on the lights, and it became pretty clear that the problem was that most lightbulbs were blown. We sat down to watch an episode of free to air TV as we have a connection to the producers, and the programme broke up the entire time so we couldn’t even have the TV on. "Country Charm” only goes so far. By bed time on night 1, we went to lock up and discovered to our horror that the front door not only does not lock but wouldn’t even stay...