rooms are really nice!
the kitchen in the main building and in the neighbouring building where we stayed at was really not ok! sticky and nothing there to clean it!
location is ok, connects pretty good into the CBD via bus.
free internet is brilliant!

Stayed here for almost 6 months while backpacking around the world. It is indeed for backpackers; however the standard of the rooms are great, the people are friendly and it's very close to all the action. I have very found memories of my stay at Billabong Gardens. It's not 4 stars (if your looking for that try priceline.com) BUT it is an oasis for the weary backpacker. Book with cofidence...You can't beat it for the price and location.

We travelled to Australia with an ederly couple. We found Billabong Gardens online and made reservation on the phone. We were a bit shocked to find it hostel.. somewhere we had missed that... but overall great place to stay. Very basic but had all that we needed for a week's stay in Sydney. Private rooms were roomy, kept clean and the staff went out of the way to assist.

We stayed a couple of nights at the Billabong Gardens on a weekend. I chose this hostel because I wanted to stay in Newtown so we could go out there. Billabong Gardens is in a fantastic location- just off King St, so very easy to access all the great restaurants, bars, shops & pubs King St has to offer. The hostel is actually in a couple of buildings, and as we had a private room, we were in the second separate building- a large house. Hence it was very quiet, which was excellent. Our room had a double bed, as well as bunks, a small verandah and a tv. There was a fan in the room, but no window, however- only a door to the verandah with no screen, so it couldn't be kept open at night to let air in. The shared bathroom we used was clean and had a good shower.

The main hostel building seemed very crowded- there were lots of people in the kitchen area at day and night. The pool at the hostel was actually quite small, and we didn't see anyone use it in the time we were there. I was glad we were staying in the second building, as it was definitely more quiet and more private than the main building. We didn't actually use any of the facilities such as the kitchen, so I can't comment on these.

A tip if you are taking a cab to the hostel from Central- just get the cab to drop you off on King St and walk down the little street that the hostel is on. It's a one-way street so you can't go down it from King St and it's pretty complicated to get to from the opposite way unless you know where you're going, so it can hike up the cab rate significantly!