Manjimup Gateway Hotel

Manjimup Gateway Hotel stands on the corner of Case Street and South Western Highway in Manjimup, the biggest town in Western Australia's southern timber country. The hotel runs a proper country pub operation: renovated rooms with comfy beds, Italian food in the restaurant, a pool table for the evenings and staff who keep regulars and travellers equally looked after.

Dogs at the hotel

Per the hotel's own site, pet friendly stays are in a three bedroom independent villa with a small pet friendly courtyard attached.

Pet stays are by arrangement, so the move is to contact the hotel before booking and confirm the villa is free for your dates. The venue's own listing is the source here, so treat the villa setup as the verified arrangement and confirm any extras like pet bedding when you call.

That single villa setup shapes who this suits: travelling families or two couples with a dog get a whole self contained base with its own outdoor space, rather than a motel corridor room.

Solo travellers with a dog should ask what else can be arranged when they call. The villa arrangement also means your dog has a courtyard to itself through the stay, which takes the daily supervision pressure off compared with shared campground setups.

Around the pub itself, the social channels carry the standing invitation: dogs are welcome in the courtyard for a drink, so dinner hour does not mean separating from the dog to eat inside. The wood fired pizza and bistro menus are the easy pick on a night you roll in late from the forest drive.

One thing to double check on that call: aggregator listings report no additional pet fee, while some booking engines carry a blanket no pets note.

The conflict is exactly why the arrangement call comes first. Book the pet room well ahead too, because locals treat the villa as the town's real dog friendly base and it books out in busy seasons.

Manjimup sits between the tall timber forests and the south coast, which makes it a natural staging town for travellers working between the two.

The town has the services a travelling dog owner needs, and the surrounding truffle and timber country gives the drive in and out some of the best scenery in the south west. The Nannup River Walk is a good leg stretch if you come in from the north, and wine country travellers can work Riverview Tourist Park at Margaret River into the same loop.

The Western Australia stays guide covers the rest of the state for planning the longer legs.