Saturday May 7
We left Rosegums just after 9am, beating the 10am checkout time by a fair margin. Since we had plenty of time to get to Silky Oaks - we drove via Jacque’s Coffee Plantation and cafe. We did a bit of a tour of the plantation and watched a video of the Jacque’s family who migrated to Australian in 1976 from Tanzania amid civil unrest to start a coffee plantation here - it was quite an amazing story of perseverance. They were not only the first coffee growers in Australia but are the largest. We had a quick lunch at the cafe.
We arrived at Silky Oaks around 2:30pm to a warm welcome - with welcome drink (sparkling wine / not champagne like Lizard). We settled into our villa - room 22 - Kookaburra then went to the beautiful lounge area for happy hour from 5:30pm.
We have visited Silky Oaks several times before (for lunch and once for an overnight stay) so we very interested to see what had changed now that Baillie Lodges had bought the property and spent some $10 million on improvements. Thinking these should be substantial as the rates had increased significantly (our room, the cheapest, was $1000 pn but was fully inclusive of breakfast and dinner with beverages, not lunch). Certainly the dining and lounge area looked more impressive - opened up. But our villa seemed to be exactly the same as before. Over our 2 night stay there were some service hiccups but this was probably due to being short staffed and having inexperienced staff - it was sort of the same on Lizard.
Anyway we went for dinner at 6:30pm as they had pre-booked us for this time - it was all a bit of a ‘disaster’ - it took an hour to get any food other than a quarter of a bread roll and a small dimsim each. As this evening was a non-negotiable set menu - to our surprise when the food finally arrived it was everything all at once - some sort of Asian fusion deal - Dieter was very un-impressed so he (and I) made a big fuss - which they offered to ‘fix’ but it was really too late.
Sunday May 8
We had a small sleep in as it had started pouring rain in the early hours of the morning - after a Nespresso in our room we went for breakfast around 8:15am as the rain had eased. Breakfast was ‘fine’ - again a couple of hiccups but nothing worth documenting. There are no photos of Sikly Oaks as it never stopped raining.
At the time of scribing this entry we are relaxing in our room listening to the rain which has started up again.
We went over to the lounge area and played a tight game of Scrabble - then back to our villa to freshen up before lunch at the lodge - we went for the classics menu (rather than the a la carte full menu with a minimum of 2 courses) - we both had grilled barramundi. Lunch is not part of the all inclusive tariff.
The rain continued so we rested in the afternoon and had another Scrabble game. Then it was time for showers, happy hour and dinner. Dinner was a la carte and definitely better than the previous evening but not outstanding.
Monday May 9
Back to Sydney today - it rained most of the night and continued in the morning until we left at 10:30am. We stopped in Palm Cove for a relaxing lunch at Peppers - Accor half price dining make it a bargain. Our 3:30pm flight was packed to the gills and we arrived home to more rain - walked in the door at 7:30pm so we dropped out bags and headed to Ventuno’s for a couple of pizzas. Unpacking had to wait until the morning.