Very small rooms with compact kitchen with the bare minimum of equipment. Some rooms (especially on the 9th floor) have amazing views across Sydney Harbour and the Opera House - very picturesque in the evening at sunset.
Located 5 mins walk from Kings Cross (not the most salubrious area of Sydney) and 30mins from downtown.
Clean rooms and friendly staff offering a 24hr check in. (Useful for those early moring arrivals at Sydney airport),
Supermarket across the road with a large variety of bars and restaurtants in the area,
Slightly more upmarket than your average backpackers hotel/hostel. Good priced for Sydney however.

The location was nice - just across a supermarket, next to Kings Cross, almost walking-distance (at least for us) to all the main sights (opera house, darling harbour, tower, botanical garden,....) We had a 2 bedroom apartment with one bathroom, a big kitchen and a fairly big living room. The bedrooms were also ok - nothing special and almost clean (don't look under your bed). The price was really good for Sydney. I would stay there again, but first I would make sure the bedrooms are not facing the mainstreet - it can get loud.

Having been booked in by Australian friends, my wife and I stayed twice at the Macleay, firstly for three nights and secondly for one night prior to leaving Sydney.

Your description of the hotel as 'a small charming hotel in a 130 year old mansion' is somewhat strange, this is a high rise block having seen better days. The interior as a whole is shabby, dingy and uncared for. The elevator floor could not have been cleaned in some time.

Rooms, although clean, were cheaply furnished and poorly decorated with only the wonderful view to compensate. However, our ninth floor second room had only a partial view, as half of the room width window had been boarded up with unpainted rough plywood. On complaining, the explanation given was that the window had fallen out in a high wind and was proving difficult to repair. On examination the remaining frame appeared to be suspect. We were told that no other room was available, take it or leave it. No apology was offered. As this was for only one night we took it.

This hotel is not worthy of a three star rating.

Stayed at the Macleay apartments over the New Year and found them to be fine for the money you spend to stay here.
The price was a bit higher at the time of the year we were staying (everywhere is full in Sydney for New Year and was asking stupid prices, but we found it to be really good value.
The apartments are in a realy good area- Potts Point, next to loads of little cafes and bars and only a short walk down to Woolloomooloo water front where there is loads of good bars and restaurants- and Harry De Wheels food place. It is close to Kings Cross, but to be honest i didn't find the place scarey at all- either through the day or night.
The staff at the Macleay were all really helpfull, and told us how to get around Sydney and where to go. We were very tired when we got there - (after 22hours travelling from the UK), and got there at 9am- but they let us check in early.
Our apartment was one of the newly refurbished apartments, so it was all new, lots of mirrors, wood floors and new furnishings. The only gripe would be there was no where to store your clothes etc and had to live out of our suitcases. The little kitchen was fine- you could make toast or snadwiches in it- don't think you could cook a full meal- but it was fine for snacks etc.
Did have a look in the older apartments and they didn't look half as nice as ours- so if you get put into a old one ask to be changed to a newer one.
One point though- the windows don't look very safe- we had a bad storm one night (night of 1st Jan after 44c temps!) and the windows above us blew out ground below. I heard the manager saying that they were going to reglaze the rooms anyway but would have to do it asap now.
Would defintitely stay here again though, and would recommend it as long as you just want cheap(ish) clean accomodation in Sydney. A plus is that Potts Point and Wooloomooloo are great and the CBD is easy to get to.