Country Victoria II: The Fleece Inn

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Originally uploaded by BLP.

The Fleece Inn was described in The Lonely Planet as a refurbished, inexpensive hotel in Bendigo. This is a fair description, but it overlooks a few details which turned out to be of minor importance. First, the view (seen here) - not the most picturesque, but I've seen worse at Hiltons in San Franciso and Chicago. The room was clean, but devoid of things like alarm clocks, radios, televisions, etc. Again, not a major problem - we can entertain ourselves, although had we known, we might have packed differently. Next, the room also lacked a bathroom, with communal facilities across the hall. Both of us can handle this with no problem, provided we have access to things like towels, soap, etc. We didn't (not to mention hot water was in limited supply). So we generally found ourselves quite ill-equipped to spend a night at the Fleece Inn. We did sleep quite well, however, and we had an OK breakfast (free of charge). We subsequently packed up our bags, and used whatever hot water we could find and then headed out. I had a nice talk with the inn's proprietor on the way out - a very pleasant woman, indeed, which is actually one of my favourite things about staying in small country motels. The people are always warm and friendly.

But, for $70 a night, we found the Fleece Inn a bit overpriced, and the experience left us feeling somewhat fleeced. In truth, given that every hotel in town appeared to be booked, I’m not sure if we had much choice. And, with a bit more prior knowledge ahead of time to plan accordingly, I think we would have fared a bit better. We learned a valuable lesson - primarily to plan better to be self-sufficient when travelling outside the city, particularly if we're going to try and go the cheap route.