Overall a bad and disappointing experience. Unfortunately the day before I was to travel, Victoria went into lockdown and I was thus restricted by government law from travelling to the accommodation. The hosts were also not allowed to have visitors over.
When the lockdown was announced, I immediately reached out to the hosts to see if I could negotiate a change in dates however they were not responsive. When they finally responded the next day, the day of the start of the booking, they said that the booking was a supposed discounted rate and also was not refundable and told me to contact Airbnb. I understood that but again i appealed to the host to consider a reschedule however again they did not respond at all. I finally cancelled the booking before the check in time to at least get the relatively small cleaning fee back. Happy to provide evidence of what happened.
From my point of view, the hosts and Airbnb had effectively taken my money without providing any service. Absolutely no compassion, flexibility or goodwill provided. So buyer beware to anyone planning to book here (or any Airbnb for that matter).
The support provided from Airbnb was abysmal as they did not do anything when contacted. Effectively their response is, please contact the host, it is all up to the host. The host on the other hand tells me to contact Airbnb. Each pointing at the other with no resolution. In the media, Airbnb would just point you to flexible booking options that allowed free cancellations, however even if I had that, I would still be in the same situation as the lockdown was announced less than 24hours before my check in time.