Stoney Creek Travel Guide

We arrived around mid-day in a fantastic location and at first it appeared to be a brilliant detour but things pretty quickly turned sour. Steve the owner of the "Farm", which it should be mentioned now offers little more than horse riding, the cattle we were informed had been sold off years ago, didn't seem to have a clue about our booking,   pointed us in the direction of the budget accommodation whilst calling out to Debbie to get us some linen.
 
The budget accommodation, which did in fact resemble a prison, was dire! What I was immediately stuck by was the filth of the place followed very closely by the number of laminated notices dotted around telling us what we couldn’t do and nothing about what we could. The lighting was, how shall I put it, ….minimal, not to add to a rural rustic feel but due to fact Steve had removed all but one of the light bulbs, not bad going seeing as it had to light 3 rooms and a veranda. I am not even going to try to verbalise the cooking utensils and “kitchen area”!!
 
The romantic slant on the outside shower was again an outcome of Steve’s inability to make the accommodation habitable. Indeed there were shower facilities in the bathroom (note no light bulb here either), but he had obviously disconnected it some time ago. Hot water for the shower was to be generated not from the gas stove but from the bonfire, gas, he had informed us was expensive, as was electricity and therefore we were only permitted to use the lighting for 1 ½ hours in the evening, the sun went down at 6:30pm!!
 
The accommodation we genuinely found funny but it was when we were treated to the wonderful world of Steve’s politics and tax evasion, did we start to become somewhat offended by him. His take on “Nig Nogs” was not particularly in tune with his “true Aussie hospitality” advert, and when he told us that all of his gas & electricity was free did we begin to feel like we, the paying customer, were little more than an irritation to him. His bragging about never having paid any tax did leave a slightly unpleasant taste in the mouth. We kept quiet during his 15 minute tirade on the wrongs of the Asians, Indians and blacks and his cunning tax evasions, as we were somewhat at a loss as what to say!
 
In the evening I gingerly requested either some wood or a saw, in order to cut some wood for a bonfire, to which I received a reply of “you could have asked before it got dark”. Steve REALLY didn’t want to get any wood for us, and kind of stood around for a few minutes glaring at me to back down. I was admittedly quite adamant that I would at the very least like a saw and in the end he relented but requested that he get it once he had finished watching his favourate soap “Home & Away”
 
We spent the rest of the evening laughing at the whole situation but decided to cut short our 2 night stay at the farm stay and do a runner!
 
It wasn’t all bad though, Kelly, Steve’s daughter, who took us out riding was lovely and the setting really was beautiful, but the cost of AUS$120 each (Steve of course charged us 3% for using efpos, as I couldn’t resist leaving a paper trail for the tax man!!) for 3 hours horsing riding, sleeping in the budget accommodation and an evening meal was a bit steep. It was an experience but it was only because it was so awful it was hilarious. This isn’t the hospitable rural outback experience it portrays itself to be, it’s just tight-arse Steve trying to be self-sufficient at the cost of others.
 
Oh and Debbie never did turn up with our linen