“Your group chat has been saying 'we should do a weekend away' for six months — this is the weekend away.”

If you and your mates have been threatening a girls' trip since January but nobody can agree on where, Berry is the answer and The Berry View is where you stay. It's two hours south of Sydney — close enough that nobody has to take a day off, far enough that it actually feels like you've gone somewhere. The town is small, pretty, and has exactly the right ratio of good coffee to cute shops to keep a group of three to six people happy without anyone having to consult a spreadsheet. You don't need a plan. You just need a car and a Friday afternoon.

The Berry View calls itself a boutique motel, which is the most honest description a property has ever given itself. It is, genuinely, a motel — but one that somebody loved enough to do properly. It sits on Queen Street, Berry's main drag, which means you can walk to everything and stumble back from dinner without needing a designated driver. For a girls' trip, that walkability isn't a bonus. It's the entire point.

The rooms and the vibe

The rooms are clean, bright, and mercifully free of the beige-and-brown palette that haunts most regional motels. There's enough space for two friends to share without getting on each other's nerves, and the beds are good — not boutique-hotel-in-Surry-Hills good, but better than you'd expect from a place that doesn't charge boutique-hotel-in-Surry-Hills prices. If your group is splitting across two or three rooms, you'll want to book ones next to each other so you can do the hallway-in-pyjamas thing without bothering strangers.

The property has a courtyard-garden situation that earns its keep on a Saturday morning. Picture this: you've grabbed coffees, someone's brought back a box of pastries, and you're sitting outside in the sun recapping the previous night. That's the moment The Berry View is designed for. It's not trying to be a resort. It's trying to be the place where the good bits of the trip happen between the good bits of the trip.

Now, the honest bit: the walls are motel walls. You will hear your friends in the next room if they're being loud at midnight, and they will hear you. This is either a problem or part of the charm depending on your group's energy. If you're planning a quiet, restorative weekend, maybe request rooms that aren't directly adjacent. If you're planning the kind of weekend where someone inevitably ends up telling a story at full volume at 1am, lean in — everyone's in on it anyway.

“It's not trying to be a resort. It's trying to be the place where the good bits of the trip happen between the good bits of the trip.”

One detail that won't show up on any booking site: the whole place has a warmth to it that feels owner-operated, because it is. You get the sense that someone chose every cushion, approved every paint colour, and actually cares whether you come back. In a town full of Airbnbs where you're communicating with a property manager via automated message, that counts for something.

What you're actually doing in Berry

Your first morning coffee is at Easy's — it's the kind of place that takes its beans seriously without making you feel like you need to know the origin story. Order whatever white coffee you normally order; it'll be good. For a mid-morning snack that the group chat will photograph aggressively, hit The Berry Donut Van. It's a van. It sells donuts. They're excellent. The line can get silly on weekends, so go early or accept your fate.

Berry's main street has enough browsing to fill a lazy afternoon — homewares shops, a good cheese shop, a couple of places where someone in your group will buy a candle they absolutely do not need. If your crew wants to stretch their legs properly, the walks around Berry Mountain and towards the coast are gorgeous without being punishing. This is a girls' trip, not a boot camp.

Dinner options in town are solid but not endless, so book ahead for Saturday night. Don't wing it and expect to get a table for five at 7pm — Berry is small and popular, and every other group of friends from Sydney had the same idea you did.

The plan

Book at least three weeks ahead for a weekend stay — Berry fills up fast once the weather turns nice, and The Berry View isn't a 200-room chain hotel with inventory to spare. If your group is four or more, grab adjacent rooms and ask at check-in. Skip the urge to over-plan the itinerary; the town is small enough that you can figure it out over morning coffee. Do book a Saturday dinner reservation the same day you book the rooms. The one move that makes everything better: arrive Friday evening, not Saturday morning. You get an extra night of doing nothing, which is the whole point.

Rooms at The Berry View start around $128 a night, which split between two people is less than a decent dinner in Sydney. For a full weekend — Friday to Sunday — you're looking at roughly $256 per person if you're sharing. Add donuts, coffee, and a nice dinner and the whole trip comes in under $356 a head. That's a girls' trip that actually happens instead of living forever in the group chat.

Book two rooms at The Berry View, get to Berry by Friday 6pm, walk to dinner, grab Easy's coffee and Berry Donut Van on Saturday morning, and send me a thank-you text by Sunday.