South Australia’s luxury safari hotel a game-changer

The hotel

Monarto Safari Resort, South Australia

Check-in

The nearest you’ll get to a high-rise building at the Monarto Safari Park, an easy hour’s drive south-east from Adelaide, is the newly opened three-storey Monarto Safari Resort. But from my breakfast table in the restaurant, I can clearly see a tower right before me. What’s more, it’s moving, albeit at a leisurely pace. There are towers and then there are towers. What we’re talking here are towers of giraffes, the favoured and rather lovely name for a grouping of these famously statuesque creatures.

Outside, between the two swimming pools, there is a viewing platform containing two telescopes for a closer look at giraffes and the other captive animals at what’s boldly billed as the biggest open-range zoo outside of Africa. The Monarto Safari Park, spanning some 1500 hectares, is home to 500 animals across 50 species of African wildlife, including a herd (also known, while we’re at it, as a “memory” or a “parade”) of elephants translocated from somewhat less spacious urban zoos elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand.

The look

There’s been a commendable and deliberate attempt by the architects and designers of the 78-room hotel to avoid predictable kitschy dark continent motifs. Although the design of the main hotel building was inspired by the “African architectural vernacular”, the influences are subtle and a few more liberties taken, if only to complement the park’s precious furry and feathery long-term stayers.

Certainly, the hotel has sturdy backers, being the baby of Gerry Ryan of Jayco caravan fame. Ryan also owns Mitchelton winery at Nagambie, Victoria, with its own standalone four star-plus hotel. Jayco’s South Australian connections don’t end at the hotel: the company is a longtime sponsor of a cycling team in the state’s annual Tour Down Under road race. Monarto hotel is managed by the Adelaide-based Journey Beyond group, operators of the Indian Pacific and The Ghan tourist trains.

The room

Here’s one hotel where you really shouldn’t spend an inordinate amount of time caged, as it were, in your room, even though a fellow guest did snap a superb shot of Monarto’s animals around the yonder waterhole visible from his balcony. Nonetheless, my otherwise perfectly comfortable and reasonably well-appointed one-bedroom suite, which also overlooks Monarto Safari Park’s waterhole, feels a little bare, and could benefit from more decoration, perhaps in the form of some celebratory framed black and white photography of Monarto’s star attractions.

Food + drink

The attractive in-house Kutjera Restaurant & Bar, with a menu emphasising South Australia’s venerable produce and ingredients, is open to inhouse guests and the public seven days a week for lunch, dinner and breakfast. It’s just as well, too, as the next nearest decent restaurants appear to be in the adjacent Adelaide Hills, a region well worth teaming with a visit to Monarto if travelling from interstate.

Out + about

There are two to 2½-hour sunset wildlife safaris, while for early risers there are equivalent dawn tours, each at an additional charge to the accommodation. Animals such as southern white rhino, giraffe, cheetahs, eland, ostriches, hippopotamus and more can be seen from specially fitted “safari trucks”. The much cheaper general admission charge to the park proper allows access to the guided “Zu-Loop” bus or designated walking tracks.

The verdict

Luxury, or near enough, accommodation, beyond the basic snore-and-roar tented variety, is not uncommon at zoos around the world, and elsewhere in Australia these days. But those behind the Monarto Safari Resort are succeeding in their ambitions to transform this longstanding free-range zoo into a destination of choice, with plans well advanced to open a separate luxury lodge with glamping tents early next year.

Essentials

From $315 a night. 63 Monarto Road, Monarto, South Australia. Ph: 1800 016 761. See monartosafariresort.com; journeybeyond.com

The writer stayed as a guest of Journey Beyond and the Monarto Safari Resort

Our rating

★★★★½

Highlight

It doesn’t get any better than giraffes at breakfast, but keep your eyes (and binoculars) out for Monarto’s 49 other species.

Lowlight

Those guest rooms, and even some of the public spaces, would benefit from a smidgen more Out of Africa ambience and romance, without overdoing it.