3 Sisters Motel Sign

The 3 Sisters Motel sign rises vertical against a black sky in Katoomba. Red neon outlines the tall MOTEL blade. Below it, 3 Sisters glows in white script on a blue-lit panel. A smaller vertical reads RESTAURANT in red. The colours bleed onto brick, hedges, and wet pavement at the base of the sign. A single globe lights the driveway entrance. Power lines cut the darkness behind a young tree washed in green spill. The motel itself sits back from the sign, dark, mostly off-camera. The sign is the one piece of the property still putting out light, and the photograph holds it as the dominant subject.

Katoomba was on the Blue Mountains run, the western leg of Hotel Motel 101. The series ran to 101 traditional motor inns photographed in three sweeps out of Sydney across 2018, north along the Central Coast, west through the Blue Mountains to the Central Western Tablelands, south to the start of the South Coast. Inclusion was the typology test. Drive-thru reception, parking in front of the rooms, low rise. Most of the photography happened in the hours either side of midnight, when there were no cars, no people, and the signs were the brightest objects on the highway.