Susan Buckland: Kangaroos on the banks of the Nile

COMMENT

I won't forget Irene of Marwood, even though I stayed a single night in her small hotel in Australia's Grampians National Park.

I realised I had booked accommodation with a difference when I drove through the gates. Kangaroos were nibbling the front lawn.

The accommodation was not the melt-into-the-background sort, either. Individual "villas" built of "aged limestone" arranged themselves in a crescent in front of cliffs tumbling with trees.

"If you have ever woken up surrounded by warm terracotta in a magical setting it may have been Tuscany," Marwood's brochure had promised, somewhat ambiguously. "Tuscany", it turned out, had been re-invented by Irene in the villa, just along from "Egypt" and "Morocco". Other locations in Irene's bush world included "France" and "India".

I was destined to wake up in Egypt on the banks of the Nile, born again in miniature at the foot of the bed. Trickle, trickle it went over the thighs of a ceramic Cleopatra.

I found the switch to turn off the Nile so Cleopatra could dry herself off overnight.

The land of the Pharaohs inside, Victoria's magnificent Grampians outside - Marwood has a forest backdrop that many hotel owners would give their eye teeth for.

Never mind that. Irene, who grew up in Britain's theme-park capital of Blackpool, has created her own theatre in the hamlet of Halls Gap in the national park.

I climbed into Egypt's huge bed and dreamed about Mark Antony steering me through a mysterious garden full of ceramic Cleopatras.

A soft munching sound broke the dream at dawn. Opening Egypt's front door I found myself face to antlers with a deer. He had emerged from the forest to dine on Marwood shrubs. He had already given Morocco and France a crew cut.

A kangaroo and her pouched joey watched from the portico of Tuscany. The occupants of that villa slept on. They may have been honeymooners. Judging by the passionate endorsements in Egypt's guest book, Irene caters to this market.

She told me over a fine breakfast (her co-proprietor and partner Ian is an excellent chef) that she aims "to put a smile in every room". Hence Leo, the stuffed lion in Africa.

Marwood's marketing manager thinks Leo is kitsch but Leo is staying put.

Buying the land to build her dream hotel felt like plunging off one of the Grampians' rocks, Irene said. The stones for the villas had to be transported across the Nullarbor.

But she is not easily daunted, certainly not by difficult customers. When one checked out early, complaining his villa was old, Irene claimed success. All the research and daubing to give a two-year-old villa a been-there-forever look had obviously worked.

She interrupted our conversation to feed an evil-looking kookaburra called Karl. Irene's menagerie includes foxes, which had their eyes on her equally cherished ducklings. But they would soon be safe on their mid-stream pontoon to be built by Ian.

It seemed irrelevant to ask her why my Egyptian villa was also called a water pavilion.

Kitsch or not, I enjoyed the water-spouting, Italianate cherub in Egypt's courtyard and the ersatz river running through the boudoir.

Irene's world added technicolour to my tour through the Grampians. In the holiday village of Halls Gap she has carved her niche with pride.