Lithgow Valley Motel, Bowenfels

The Lithgow Valley Motel sits in Bowenfels on the western edge of Lithgow, 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. A pole sign at the kerb carries the property name in a 1970s sans-serif on a backlit panel, the lettering picked out in white against a cream ground. The carpark is empty in the small hours. The Lithgow Valley sits below the property to the east; the descent from the Blue Mountains escarpment is behind the camera. A single security light at the office end throws hard cones across the asphalt.

The Lithgow Valley Motel was photographed at 01:38 on 10 April 2018, on the western 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. Bowenfels sits on the western descent from the Blue Mountains into the Lithgow industrial-and-mining valley, the kind of country-town stop the Great Western corridor carried before the freeway took the through traffic.