Smith Journal — January 2018

073 SMITH JOURNAL

Page 070
Kirriwinna Motel,
Noosaville, Queensland

Clockwise from top left
Grandview Motel, Mount
Gambier, South Australia

Surfside Motel, Yeppoon,
Queensland

Meteor Motel, Port
Augusta, South Australia

Pink Poodle, Surfers
Paradise, Queensland

Glenara Motel, Lakes
Entrance, Victoria

The Sands Motel,
Adelaide, South Australia

All postcards courtesy of
Simon Reeves

There was an early example in Eaglehawk

Neck, Tasmania called the Penzance Motel,

where honeymooners were looked after by

staff in pirate-themed costumes. “It was

vaguely similar,” says Reeves. “But you

certainly wouldn’t recognise it as a motel in

the way we see them today.”

One of the first built in the classic Googie style

was the Oakleigh, situated at the halfway point

of the Melbourne Olympic marathon on the

Princes Highway. “It was built in anticipation

of the 1956 Olympics,” Reeves explains. “But,

sadly, it didn’t open until ’57, a couple of

months after the Games had finished.”

Most early examples prided themselves on

their American look, and adopted names

such as the Sands, Siesta, or The Palms.

Many simply affected American city names

like the Kansas City in Bairnsdale, Orange’s

Belair Motel, or the New Orleans of Surfers

Paradise. But while they wore their U.S.

influence on their pastel-coloured facades,

motels quickly ingrained themselves into the

Australian psyche.

“One of the lures of the motel was that it

was a home on the road,” explains Graeme

Davison, author of Car Wars: How the Car

Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities.

“But it was also a place of dreams, with the

latest appliances that weren’t at home. Motels

had TV in the room long before they were

ubiquitous at home, and usually had an

in-ground swimming pool before backyard

pools were commonplace. They also had

a superior menu and wine list. There was

an appreciation that here was a new way of

enabling people to travel and see Australia.”

Of course, people had travelled around

Australia before. But the country hotels of the

mid-’50s were notorious for being a step away

from camping. “Quite often you’d have nasty

exposed floorboards, ripped lino and beds

that were ancient and lumpy,” says Reeves.

“For breakfast, you’d be lucky to have some

porridge thrown at you. So, the motel had

wow factor. You had your own bathroom,

you could drive your car to the front door

and take your suitcase straight in. You didn’t

have to carry it up three flights of stairs. You

could have breakfast when you wanted it.

We’re blasé about it now, but it was a massive

change in the way accommodation worked.”

..........................................

For all the tangible changes it brought to

travel, it’s arguable the motel’s biggest impact

was metaphorical. “Motel, money, murder,

madness,” Jim Morrison sang on ‘L.A.

Woman’, a song he partially wrote in West

Hollywood’s Alta Cienega Motel, where he

lived for much of The Doors’ career.

It’s a verse that sums up many of our collective

feelings about the humble motor hotel, which

looms large across pop culture – for good and

bad. Civil rights campaigner Martin Luther

King, Jr. was murdered at a motel. Singer Tom

Waits called L.A.’s Tropicana Motel home.

Even visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright

designed a motor inn for his suburban utopia,

Broadacre City. Hollywood, too, has long used

the motel to signify angst and alienation, from

Psycho and Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil to

the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men.

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