Elkes Backpackers

In Darwin I stayed in Elkes backpackers. It consists of several unattached little buildings with dorms in them.

I stayed in a small dorm for 4 girls. There was a fridge in the dorm instead of in the kitchen, at least that way you know it’s someone in the dorm to blame if your food goes missing. The dorm was small but there was enough room for luggage. And there was a fan and air con, which was nice as Darwin is quite warm.

The Wi-Fi is $6 for 1hour! You try catching up on blogs, Facebook, e-mails and post some new blog posts in an hour!

The kitchen is really small so I can understand why they didn’t have the fridges there, it was also a little bit hard to find because it was under the stairs and there was no signs pointing to it. I also found out on one of my last days that there is a kitchen on the floor I was staying at as well, but by then I just couldn’t be bothered to try and find it.

The hostel has a small swimming pool, a common room with a TV and a small bookshelf where you can swap your books. There is no sofa in the common room; there are a few plastic chairs and a mattress on the floor.

Elkes isn’t in the middle of the city, but since Darwin is so small you only have to walk for 5-10 minutes to get into the city centre. Coles and Woolworth is also about a 5-10 minute walk away.

There is a laundry room, $4 for the washing machine $3 for the dryer, there are also clothes lines to hang your washing on, but they are not very close to the laundry room so I thought they didn’t have any at first. You can only do your laundry between 2 and 9pm, which is annoying, for me anyway as I like to get it done as quick as possible so that it has time to dry on the lines before I have to take it in again.

The showers don’t have any pegs at all inside them, which is understandable in a way because the stalls are so small that your things would get wet, but I still don’t like it. There is one peg on the outside of each shower stall, meaning you have to hang your towel over the door unless you want to step out of the shower naked. I’m glad I wasn’t staying in a mixed dorm since I had to change in the dorm.

One thing that really worries me about the place is the smoke detectors… I don’t think they’re on, since they’re open I mean… That can’t be legal!