08 Aug 2023
Words John Miller Informer 107

Reception This Way

For the past several years, Tim Ross has had a love affair with Australia’s roadside motels.

That affair was consummated in his resplendent 2019 book Motel. Images of Australia on holiday, which is populated with a collection of around 80 photos from the National Archives of Australia lovingly curated by Ross. Fittingly for a book about roadside motels, Ross has taken his show on the road, which will run until 13 August at various locations across the nation.

An American import, roadside motels became an integral part of the Australian holiday experience from their heyday in the ‘50s and ‘60s through to their decline in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Roadside motels were stylish and sophisticated, with novelties such as breakfast hatches and carparks right outside hotel rooms which revolutionised the Australian road trip for holidaymakers.

“It’s important to remember that before the advent of the motel most people stayed in guest houses or with friends or you stayed in a pub with a shared room,” says Ross. “Roadside motels were a revolution. You could go to a motel and have your own bedroom and bathroom. They were so modern. For most Australians, it was their first taste of staying in a modern building.”

“Today’s appeal of retro motels cuts across generations.”

Australia hit peak retro between 1955 and 1960 when the number of motels doubled every year. Particularly in vogue was Googie-style architecture. Named after Googie’s coffee shop in West Hollywood, the style was characterised by bold and futuristic designs that incorporated elements such as geometric shapes, vibrant colours, and steel and glass construction.

Googie-style found its natural habitat on Queensland’s Gold Coast. One of the best exemplars of Googie was El Dorado Motel, which opened in Surfers Paradise in 1955. One of Australia’s first motels, El Dorado’s design featured abstract murals in bold primary colours combined with areas of black. (Incidentally, El Dorado was once sold by ResortBrokers’ Chairman Ian Crooks.)

“With a lot of these hotels, particularly the ones on the Gold Coast, they were built by people who had gone overseas and just taken some photos,” says Ross. “So, the proportions are all out of whack because it’s just an interpretation of something they’d seen overseas. Pioneers like Bernie Elsey on the Gold Coast came back from Florida with a bunch of photos taken with a Box Brownie and said to his builders, ‘Make this.’ So, they did.” 

Celebrated Australian architect Robin Boyd derided our adoption of American design as “Austerica.” Boyd added his own spin to the roadside motel by placing the bathroom at the front of the unit thereby muffling the sound and lights of parking cars for other guests. One of Boyd’s roadside creations, the Black Dolphin Motel in Merimbula on NSW’s Sapphire Coast, was recently sold by ResortBrokers’ Russell Rogers to ASX-listed Aspen Group.

“Robin was a bit of a snob,” says Ross. “But he was right to consider that it was important for us to have buildings that reflect our landscape and who we are.”

Ross says today’s appeal of retro hotels cuts across generations. “You can be seduced by the romance of something without it being of your time,” he says. “It can be of your parents’ or your grandparents’ time and still have an appeal. I’m interested in images from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and it wasn’t my time.”

For those with personal memories of staying in these hotels, they hold a special appeal.

“People just love them,” says Ross. “It’s this wonderful walk down memory lane. Our memories of our trips, our family holidays are so evocative, so formative, so burnt into our minds, that we can’t get enough of these memories of holidays of the past.

“They took us away from the everyday. And there was the magic of those small moments, whether it’s the breakfast magically appearing through a little hatch or being able to watch TV in bed.

“There was a luxury to them but also a simplicity to the way we lived back then. There was an austerity to the way we lived in the past, so these motels represented moments of glamour. Even the shitty ones had a touch of glamour.” END

Motel. Images of Australia on holidays is published by Modernister.

Ross’ roadshow Reception this way: motels – a sentimental journey with Tim Ross is touring nationally for the next two years.

Ross’ live show MOTEL plays at the Mitchelton Winery in Nagambie, Victoria, on 26 August.