Firstly to point out that this review is given as dog owners. It is in this light that our evaluation is given and how the experience was for us.
We chose Fonty's
Pool because it was `Pet Friendly'. We however at best could only describe it as `PET TOLERANT'. To their credit, Fonty's was the only park that we had considered, that would allow us to take two dogs. Of the others, they would only allow us to take one. As we have two, small,
well behaved terriers, our choice of parks was therefore limited.
Our arrival at the caravan park wasn't without incident. We arrived in the road that the
campsite is situated and missed the small sign that says `Fonty's
Pool 8km'. Fonty's was listed in the Cruisers Sat Nav. However it was no where near the correct coordinates. It was 7km out. We travelled down Seven Day Road and as it happened ended up doing a U-Turn probably a km short of the park. We did however manage to spot the sign at the second time of asking.
We checked in at reception. The lady was friendly and helpful. She gave us some maps and information on surrounding points of interest and placees to go. We were also told of the managements rules and policies.
The caravan park was fully grassed. It was beautifully green and lush. Very
well kept and maintained. Beautiful manicured in fact. The pitches were spacious and the powered caravan sites came with a concrete slab. Most of the pitches had a degree of shade provided by the resident trees.
There was a comprehensive set of facilities. The
camp kitchen was spacious and seemed very popular. We can't comment on the shower block as we used our in van shower and
toilet. All I can add is that of all the people we spoke to, we never heard a word of complaint. There were also a large number of waste
bins provided, along with recycable
bins for glass, plastic and tin. What impressed us most was that the park staff continually monitored the waste, and emptied the
bins accordingly. This ranks highly with us, as a pet hate is those sites where the
bins over flow and waste mounts up around them. That in itself makes getting rid of one's own waste, unpleasent. We also had occasion obviously to use the
dump point. On the two occasions I used it, the facility was 100% clean and pretty odourless.
So to our personal review and summing up. We have to rank this park down. Again, we underline that its based on `our experience'. Although our dogs were very
well behaved and always on a leash we were reminded several times that at no times are dogs allowed to run free. We don't have an issue with this rule, but this is where we view them as Pet tolerant. Despite having nice, ample grounds, they would not allow any areas to be used for owners wishing to allow their pets to have a bit of a run free. Another big minus was that no dogs were allowed down to
the pool. This is a big minus for us, as one of our girls really loves to have a swim. Due to this rule it meant that we never went in
the pool ourselves as we'd have had to go one at a time.
There were no immediate
places to go by foot unfortunately. This meant that we were slaves to the car. If you don't mind driving all the time, there are an abundance of interesting
places to go and Fonty's would make a great start point. That being said, only if you don't have animals. I will add to that point, that is not a fault of the caravan park, but of WA's southwest, which seems over run by National parks. Access to forrests and coastlines was near impossible.
So for people with pets not a great place to go, but probably ok for families. If they had an exercise area and allowed pets by
the pool, then rating would have been considerably better. We won't be returning to this site.