We stayed in a Lake Spa Suite for 2 nights over easter. While we were satisfied with our stay (our expectations having admittedly been tempered somewhat by some of the negative reviews on this site), we would probably not choose to stay here again on our next trip. The property is pretty and comfortable, but a bit impersonal, and we think overpriced for the region. (We stayed at Merribrook Retreat for the first 3 nights of our trip and actually liked it much better, though it was not in the same luxury category.)

Our room was in one of the newly added buildings at one end of the lake. It was spacious, including a separate lounge area and large jacuzzi bath (which was an awkward triangular shape and not well lit). However, it had a rather empty, corporate feel in terms of the lighting and furnishings. The room opened onto a private terrace with a view of the lake and restaurant.

The service we encountered at reception and the restaurant was polite and efficient, but somehow lacking in warmth and genuineness. The dinner we had was good, though not excellent; we had far better meals at some of the wineries.

Overall, we had no real complaints, but found nothing to enthuse over either. We would return to Merribrook Retreat or try another property next time.

I sometimes wonder if I'm staying at the same hotel as some of the previous reviewers!! Do they not check on the facilities before they book their stay??

We had an excellent four night stay at this beautiful hotel. We stayed in a garden room, I think it's the cheapest accomodation there, but it was absolutely lovely. It was very quiet, single storey, and you could watch the birds from the beautiful window over looking the lake.

The staff were excellent. We loved the afternoon tea with fresh muffins served in the lounge. They also had free WiFi which my husband was very pleased about. CDs and DVDs were available to take back to your room - no extra charge.

The restaurant was fantastic and we thoroughly enjoyed every meal we had there. The staff in the restaurant were lovely.

The area around this hotel in Yallingup is absolutely lovely and the beaches are breathtaking. Do visit Busselton Pier and the lighthouse.

It was a wonderfully, restful end to our five weeks of travel in Australia. Thank you.

We were lucky enough to score a free weekend staying at the Cape Lodge Hotel thanks to my wife’s boss. He was impressed with her unswerving obsequiousness and as a reward, declared that she should book a weekend for the two of us at the most expensive hotel in Perth. We had no desire to stay in Perth for the weekend so I hit the Internet and turned up Cape Lodge which at $400 a night seemed appropriately over-the-top. Cape Lodge is slap-bang in the middle of Western Australia’s premier wineries and ideally located for exploring the region.

The lodge itself looked dead sexy, kind of like a squashed up version of the old Canberra Hyatt deposited by a lake. It has half-a-dozen rooms clustered around a central lounge and restaurant. One of the “world’s most opulent boutique hotels” the website declared, along with photos of comfy sofas and laughing staff to support this bold statement. It sounded good. I could imagine getting stuck into some snifters on a club lounge with rich, interesting people instead of our usual n’er-do-well friends. We were sold and reached for the phone. But we hit a snag immediately. The lodge itself was closed for renovations. Would we like a lakeside suite instead? A little more expensive at $440/night, but hey, what’s money? Especially when it’s someone else’s.

Imagining the sumptuous weekend ahead of us, we packed for all contingencies – dinner at the restaurant – check, croquet clothes – check, canoeing gear – check. The drive down on Friday afternoon was exhilarating, the car understeering wildly thanks to the weight of our luggage in the boot. It was when we arrived that I realized the folly of our over-packing. Our upstairs suite was located over 100 metres from the nearest car park and there was no sign of any staff to assist. In most hotels you have to fight off staff trying to carry your bags 10 paces to the elevator. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen at Cape Lodge. As I struggled with luggage seemingly composed of matter from a neutron star I contemplated the lack of assistance. Am I being arrogant or snobby to expect help with my luggage? At $440 a night I wouldn’t have thought so. Perhaps it’s part of the great Aussie tradition of striving to be humble. This is best modeled by our parliamentarians who insist on riding in the front seat of their limos to demonstrate their down-to-earthedness and empathy with the common man. Little matter that the front passenger seat is the most likely to be fatal in an accident, it’s more important to look humble than to save oneself from road trauma. Why don’t they just ride push-bikes? But I digress.

Once my cardiovascular system had recovered we set about exploring our suite. There wasn’t much to explore. The suites are really just big rooms with a balcony and a bathroom. The décor is straight out of those magazines you see in plastic surgeon’s waiting room. I’d never seen a room like it in the real world and was quite smitten. My wife managed to break the towel rack within the first few minutes and I contented myself by fiddling with the airconditioning. I don’t feel at home in a hotel room until I have become intimately acquainted with the air conditioning and imposed my will on it. Many a time a shocked waiter has surprised me with a butter knife in my hand and the workings of a dial thermostat neatly laid out on the mini–bar. It’s my experience that such thermostats are the devil’s own work and never work properly. No such worries with this set-up however as it’s all digital and works silently and efficiently.

With nothing to bother us but a broken towel rack I felt uncomfortably comfortable. I phoned reception. ‘We’d like to go canoeing”, I declared. “Canoeing? We don’t have any canoes,” said a baffled receptionist. “But it’s in your brochure,” I countered. “It must be a mistake, we’ve never had canoes,” she responded confidently. I was becoming frustrated. “Can we have a game of croquet then?” “You could, but we’ve misplaced the mallets during the renovation.” I decided to give up at this point. Instead of enjoying activities in the “manicured bushlands” of the lodge we decided to hit the road and check out the Margaret River township.

We returned after dark and decided some room service dinner was in order. We were a tad surprised that our room service menu stated that room service ceases at 5.00 pm. Yes, we thought it was a typo as well. Just when you’re getting peckish it becomes impossible to order anything. I was unable to accept this lunacy and picked up the phone. It was dead. There was no network available for our mobiles so we were effectively incommunicado. I set off on foot for the restaurant located a couple of hundred meters away overlooking the lake. “Our phone’s not working,” I told the maitre de. “Yes, all the phones are down at the moment,” he proffered. Lucky you don’t need to organize a med-evac then mate, I thought to myself. I raised the subject of room service and the 5.00 pm deadline. “Oh, I’m sure we can whip you up something.” And he did. Some tasty asparagus, ham and fresh baked bread. We whiled away the rest of the evening watching telly on comfy sofas and listening to the motorcycle frogs on the lake. It was just like living next door to Evel Knievel.

We occupied the next day with visits to some of the local wineries and by late afternoon we were ready for our much anticipated Saturday night dinner at the restaurant. The restaurant is reserved for Lodge guests only and claims to be one of the best in the region. After a spa bath we got gussied up and headed for the restaurant at 7.30. The old restaurant in the original lodge is being renovated and the new restaurant they’ve built is disappointing. Like the suites themselves it’s all very Voguey but strangely without atmosphere. It’s a soulless, modern bit of design that looks like a set from the movie Gattaca.

It occurred to me at this point what was wrong with Cape Lodge. Once, when it was just the old lodge, it must have been wonderful. Six sumptuously appointed rooms clustered around an intimate lounge and restaurant in a grand old building – and in all probability, someone to carry your bags! The owners have sought to capitalize on the original’s success by scattering new suites and a new restaurant building around the grounds. But why is bigger better? If restaurateurs are lucky enough to run a successful restaurant why must they expand it, franchise it, open new branches? Why can’t they just stick with something small but perfectly formed instead of something big, indifferent and impossible to control? In adding the new suites and restaurant they have lost what made the place special in the first place. The intimacy and coziness have gone and it’s a stretch of the imagination for Cape Lodge to continue to call itself a “boutique” hotel.

Not wishing to spoil the evening, I drowned my concerns with a sherry in the lounge adjoining the restaurant. We eyeballed the other guests and imagined them to be orthodontists who had got lucky with some nickel shares and decided to take the missus away for the weekend. Orthodontists seem to like to eat early and several tables were on to their desert when we were seated at 8.00 pm. Some of the staff eyed us uneasily, they looked like they wanted to get away by 9.30 and we were a potential fly-in-the-ointment. The staff were however friendly and affable in that quaint way that the Australian hospitality industry believes makes up for not knowing anything about the food and wine on offer.

The menu is not large but claims to offer “innovative cuisine”. There were about ten dishes on offer, either as entrée or main course size. I started with the grilled marron ($21). When I was a kid, I used to catch marron in the creek on our farm. We never ate them though, they looked disgusting. But I put my childhood prejudices aside and reacquainted myself with these strange creatures. It didn’t taste like much at all, imagine a bland and rubbery sort of mock lobster and you’d be pretty close to the mark.

My main course of beef fillet medallions ($28) was disappointing. One medallion was cooked medium – as I had requested – while the other very well done. Is this what they mean by “innovative cuisine”? Now call me old-fashioned but is it really that difficult to cook both medallions for the same amount of time? I was annoyed at this inattention to the basics of running a kitchen so I complained. A free desert was offered and I accepted, keen to renew my blood glucose levels after the luggage endurance test of the day before.

My wife ordered the scallops and the venison. The venison is raised on a farm nearby to the lodge and indeed most of the dishes are prepared using local produce. She declared both dishes palatable but unexceptional. She said it was a bit like the bistro up the road from our house, good homely style food, the sort of thing you might cook for yourself, but all up, it wasn’t the sort of meal we were hoping for.

We were the last diners in the restaurant. We thought about having a snifter in the lounge but we decided not to risk putting a crimp in the social lives of the staff. Instead, we repaired to our suite to drink some of the day’s booty and sit on the balcony listening to the motorcycle frogs at full throttle.

(This review replaces the previous one which appears to have lost most of its punctuation!)

We spent 4 weeks in early 2007 touring Australia and decided to finish off with 6 nights at Cape Lodge on the Margaret River intending to flop and to do very little. We had read a glowing review in a British Sunday newspaper and it seemed just the ticket. When we arrived, the weather was comparatively cool - mid 20s - but hotter weather was forecast. Our experience closely matched that of the reviewer from Perth of 17/11/2003 entitled 'Expensive but Disappointing'. We would commend this review to you, one of the best we've read. We found the resort chic but somewhat starchy but the accommodation wasn't as good as we had expected and we felt a little let down. What, however, ruined it for us was when we phoned reception to ask where the pool was, as we planned to spend much of the next few days lolling beside the pool reading our books. We were utterly astonished to be told that they had no pool but they would loan us beach towels if we wanted to drive the few miles to the sea. We could scarcely believe that a leading resort hotel in Western Australia would fail to have a pool and the manager, when we confronted him about this, seemed thoroughly embarrassed and clearly had had the same conversation many times before. He handled the matter very well and suggested an alternative hotel to which we moved two days later. We therefore had two pleasant days at Cape Lodge but were ready to leave. Cape Lodge is comfortable and gentile and the breakfasts are nice, as are the staff. Dinner was however weird. Of the ten choices of entree/main, almost half were shellfish and we were shellfished out. Nor did we care much for the non-shellfish dishes. We amused ourselves by thinking up a new dish for the chef which would sit well with the other combinations on offer. We came up with smoked venison with redcurrant mash and lychees with a peanut butter sauce.

The hotel we moved to, Quay West at Bunker Bay, which we liked very much is about 30 miles north of Cape Lodge on a beautiful quiet beach. It is not as chic as Cape Lodge but is much cheaper and the food is as good. It has a nice pool and fantastic bathing. Our room, a one bedroomed cottage, was huge and newly built with all facilities you could imagine, even a washing machine and dryer. There were lots of young families there for the weekend so it was by no means sedate but we liked it a lot.