Bella Vista Hotel

A two-storey motor inn facade faces an empty carpark at night. Yellow line markings cut across dark asphalt at the Bella Vista Hotel. A white classical statue stands between concrete pillars at ground level, one arm raised, its plaster surface bright under artificial light. A smaller relief figure sits high on the wall to the right. Black metal chairs stand on upper balconies behind iron railings. Teal-painted panels and white render fill the space between the windows. The lights inside are off. The lit work is being done entirely by the carpark fittings, throwing the front into hard relief against the black sky behind.

Bella Vista is one of 102 traditional Australian motor inns photographed for Hotel Motel 101 across 2018. The series ran in three sweeps out of Sydney: north along the Central Coast, west through the Blue Mountains, south down the start of the South Coast. Drive-thru reception, parking in front of the rooms, low rise. Chain motels were skipped. Properties like Bella Vista, with their classical references and decorative concrete and rendered surfaces, sit in a postwar lineage of motel architecture that was deliberately a little aspirational and a little theatrical, designed to read from the highway at speed.