Jolly Knight Motel

Three doors face the carpark at the Jolly Knight Motel. Rooms 22, 23, 24. A teal fascia runs the length of the building, matched by slim steel columns spaced evenly along the walkway. The timber-grain doors are weathered and blotched. Lace curtains hang behind each window, grey and heavy. A single bulb burns above room 23, throwing hard light across the pebblecrete path. Wet asphalt reflects the light back. There are no cars in the bays in front of the doors. There is no movement at any of the windows.

The Jolly Knight 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. The inclusion criterion was strict. Drive-thru reception, parking in front of the rooms, low rise. Chain motels were skipped. The format restricted the project to a particular kind of building, the one Australians were most likely to remember from family road trips, and locked it to a particular window of architectural history. The three-door layout, the teal fascia, the slim steel columns: this is what a motor inn was supposed to look like.