Successful event tips

 

 

Tips for a successful celebration event in the Cockatoo Room. If you have booked with us we recommend you read this carefully, print it off and bring it with you. 

  • Remember your event is meant to be fun and for you to have plenty of time to interact with your guests. Ensuring that brides and grooms or guests-of-honour do not have to worry or over-commit their time and energy to organising and/or doing things on the actual celebration day is in itself an achievement. Plan this aspect carefully.

  • Consider booking at least Cafe cottage for more than the minimum 2 weekend nights (ideally at least one at each end) so that you can set-up and/or undertake and clean-up at a leisurely pace.
  • Be creative with your actual event. You are free to decorate inside however you wish using installed hooks, wire and supplied roll of fishing line. We request you do not use sticky tape or other fixings that will damage our walls. Note that we have tablecloths for hire. We have provided tying points, wire and a roll of fishing line for ceiling mounted decorations.

  • We have a 12-channel sound system able to take inputs from IPods, MP3 players, CDs as well as multiple microphone or instrument inputs. We have microphone capacity for speeches. We have an overhead projector to which a computer can be connected for a personalised, amusing/embarrassing, photographic or slide past life presentation.

  • Having to vacate accommodation by 11am on the morning after a big celebration can be a challenge that needs consideration. We can generally, but not always (please check with us), allow a late checkout (say 1pm or later) in Cafe and Cockatoo but we often need other cottages vacated by 11am so we can preare for incoming guests. Avoiding any rush might be a good reason for you to consider extending at least the Café Cottage booking for an extra night.

  • Consider having a brunch on the morning after the celebration (using the Café kitchen and/or BBQs) to which all guests who have attended your event, whether accommodated at Bawley Bush Cottages or elsewhere, are invited. Many of our guest groups enjoy this occasion for post-mortems and farewells.

  • Consider having that brunch separately catered and/or consider engaging a waiter or kitchen hand to assist in such Sunday brunch and/or function room clean-up. Though friends are usually more than willing, having a paid hand to help and do odd set-up jobs and removal to assist friends is well worth considering. We can help you find such people, check Local Providers on our website.

  • Consider dividing accommodation tariffs into a flat per person per night tariff so guests who you want to contribute to costs can easily do so. We are prepared to split bills but if so we need to know what is happening in advance.

  • Please do not use outdoor plastic stackable chairs inside. They might fail on our hardwood floor.

  • For an event of up the 80 people there is sufficient parking in our car-parks and on our roadsides.  If your event is larger and the ground is dry we can provide for overflow parking on grass with star pickets and tape marking parking limits so as to not interfere with vistas from Cockatoo Room to the lake. It can help if you allocate someone to be a parking marshall. When the ground is wet then it will not be possible to park on the grass and roadsides further from the Cockatoo Room will need to be used for parking.

  • We have white and coloured banners that can be borrowed and placed at the Willinga Road/Bawley Point Road intersection and at our gateway if you wish to identify our place to arriving guests.

  • The Cockatoo Room servery is suitable for use as a bar only for functions of up to about 30 people. All larger functions will need to set up a temporary bar on the verandas. We have a moveable servery and large ice containers to facilitate this. In locating your bar give consideration to ensuring that those who are being served are not blocking the free flow of guests elsewhere. A reminder, you are not authorised to sell alcohol.

  • We have space for your more impecunious friends/guests to camp in tents, campers or caravans wherever you like to locate them (but that subject to weather-related ground conditions). There is some 15 and 10 amp power available for campers. They have access to all Cockatoo Room toilets, bathrooms and showers. The tariff payable for such overflow accommodation is included under our Tariff Tab. Give consideration to locating such campers where they will not interfere with views or photographs. If using areas other than to east of Café and Cockatoo Room be sure to ask where poly water pipes are located if you intend to drive in tent pegs.

  • The weatherproof 15amp and 10 amp power sockets available on the Cockatoo Room veranda can be used for whatever purpose is needed, including by musicians, DJs or for campers. There is also a weatherproof 10amp socket in the gazebo. We have some extension leads you are free to borrow but be careful not to leave adaptors in a position where they could get wet.

  • We carry sufficient crockery, cutlery, wine, champagne and drinking glasses to cater for a function of 80 people. This stock will be spread between the Cafe Cottage and Cockatoo Room kitchens. It is a condition of use that all such stock and all kitchen equipment be left clean and stored away again after use. That applies also to the domestic and commercial dishwashers. Instructions on side of commercial dishwasher.

  • If using the outside area for part of your event make fall-back arrangements for wet or hot weather. We believe we have the facilities to cope with either eventuality. You are free to erect stages, arches, frames, dance floors, tents or marquees but if these might require pegs or driving-in of posts you must first check with our office the location of water pipes and underground power.  We require all such structures to be removed by the end of the event. The Cockatoo Room is endowed with veranda lights and flood lights that spill light away from the building. Switches for side veranda and flood lighting are located at respective-side large breezeway entrance doors. The gable flood light switch is at the rear of the Cockatoo Room.  You are free to provide your own fairy or other lighting to enhance evening effects.
     
  • The only restriction we have regarding music is that loud and/or throbbing music must cease by 11pm. Your event will be private but the reason for this restriction is that neighbours live over the lake and noise travels across water very readily.

  • The indoor dimmable lights are switched at the rear of the Cockatoo Room and the mirror ball is controlled from inside the lighting box. You are free to add whatever other decorative low-wattage lighting, eg fairy lights or lanternes, you wish.