Captains Cove Resort - Waterfront Apartments

We stayed 2 nights on Thu 29 and Fri 30 August 2024, in an Apartment. This is a fabulous location and is a great stop-over while cruising Gippsland area. The Apartment was huge 140m2, three bedrooms and two bathrooms, double storey, large kitchen, dining and lounge area, with verandas upstairs and downstairs. You only pay for the number of bedrooms you use. Rates were good. Management was helpful and friendly. Paynesville is a great small town, with only one shopping *****, with village Pub, a few eating places, and a Bottle Store that was also a fish ‘n Chips place (called PNC for Piss n Chips!). Raymond Island is for residential only, with a Ferry service ($14 over, free return). Yes, Captains Cove and Paynesville are recommended.

This is our second time here, and we will come back again. We love it so much, that we chose to spend our honeymoon here. The apartments are set on an enclosed lake, with visiting ducks and swans throughout the day. Climate control works very well with the whole house warming quickly in winter. The homes are clean, beds are extremely comfortable, and are close to all the local food spots. Would highly recommend this gem of a stay, especially for couples. Very romantic and relaxing.

I had high expectations from the price and the photos. In reality, the "resort" is disappointing. the apartment itself was lovely and the view was nice, but the facilities are very poor. the pool, which we were really looking forward to, was murky and cloudy with cracks in the bottom. my children found it very unpleasant. it is marketed as being heated, but it was cold, I could not get in at all and the kids did not stay in long. the tennis Court and basketball ring are combined, so if people were playing tennis, the kids could not play basketball and vice versa. we hoped to use the kayaks a lot as this was a main enticement for us, but they are very expensive to use and we certainly did not get our moneys worth. it would have been great if we could have used them a lot more, but the cost is prohibitive. you cant just go for a little paddle in the morning and evening, you have to pay for 3 hours each time... and if there is no one at the reception, you cant access the vests and paddles, so you are limited to when there is someone there. it is a great shame, for the price of accommodation, and particularly with the pool being so unpleasant, the use of kayaks could have been complimentary. unfortunately we had neighbours on each night who were noisy, or smoking and drinking. the private jetties are not actually private, they are shared. the people beside us were sitting on theirs drinking and smoking and swearing which meant that we could not use ours. I had been looking forward to walking along the pictured boardwalk, but it is not very long. we decided to swim at the "beach" at the foreshore ... it is not a very nice walk and then on arrival, it is not something that you would let your children swim in. it is not pleasant. we walked into the Main Street (the esplanade) each day, it is about a ten minute walk along the streets. there is a beach there. Raymond island is fantastic, and the bikes are terrific fun. we had hoped to hire a boat but found it difficult to organise unfortunately. Captains Cove is the most expensive place that we have ever stayed at, I wanted to splash out and stay somewhere fancy. it is not fancy. we have stayed at much better places than this, that have been a lot less money. this is not worth the amount of money that we paid. very disappointing for that price. it would not take much to improve the experience - fix up the pool, have the kayaks more accessible, have the basketball ring not on the tennis court. something to block the neighbours view onto the balcony would be nice too,

All the apartments (which are more like small villas) are very slightly different but all face a pretty, small marina area. We were in the very end one and it was very clean, spacious and comfortable. It was tastefully decorated, generally well equipped and a lovely place to stay. We loved the downstairs deck area and the upstairs balcony, with their lovely views. It is well situated for the Lakes area. We enjoyed seeing the koalas nearby and the Sunset Bay walk. The staff were friendly and helpful. We enjoyed our stay here.