In the winding hills behind Apollo Bay is the aptly named, Hideaway Cottage.

This beautiful accommodation will completely disconnect you from the world and you will be happy to, surrounded by lush landscape and home to many koalas, there is an outdoor pizza oven and fireplace, indoor fireplace, record player with a pretty good range of records, dvds and game console.

Our stay was for a couple of nights, it was in between lockdowns and that winter was particularly long (or so it felt), but coming here was the perfect recharge.

We recommend shopping for all your supplies before arriving, although the drive is only 15 minutes, it was good to settle in, we actually didn’t leave once during our stay, only to take a walk along the road to spot some koalas. The accomodation is pet friendly, although I wouldn’t recommend for adventurous dogs, as there is a lot of land through dense bushland they can disappear pretty quickly into and the abundance of wildlife that calls this place home.

What was special about this place was it felt a world away from the world, which at the time was what we needed during the many lockdowns Victoria endured, but that aside we also loved having our dogs in such a cosy and beautiful landscape.

It was somewhere we could take our senior dog and she enjoyed exploring the grounds and for our kids to settle next to the fire, play board games and read books.

For me, I got to pretend we lived a humble life in this pretty little cottage for a moment and it felt really nice.