Bowen Inn Motel

The Bowen Inn Motel sits on a Lithgow-area street, the building single-storey brick with the room doors facing the front carpark under a continuous awning. The brick is pale, the trim a brown along the fascia and the doorframes. A pole sign at the kerb carries the property name in a serif face on a backlit cream panel. The carpark is empty in the small hours. A row of metal-framed chairs sits along the walkway. The Lithgow Valley sits at altitude; the cool air sits across the property at this hour. A single security light at the office end throws hard cones across the asphalt.

The Bowen Inn Motel was photographed at 01:55 on 10 April 2018, on the western Lithgow run of Hotel Motel 101. The project covered 101 traditional Australian motor inns across three sweeps out of Sydney in late March and early April 2018: south on the Hume, north on the Pacific, west on the Great Western. Drive-thru reception, parking in front of the rooms, low rise. The Lithgow Valley carried several traditional motor inns through the postwar period, serving the coal-mining workforce, the Great Western highway through-trade, and the visiting workforce of the Lithgow industrial base.