Motel 617, Kiama

Motel 617 at Kiama carries its name as a literal street-number-and-purpose sign at the front of the building, the number 617 picked out in white capitals on a backlit panel. The building is 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. The carpark is empty in the small hours. A row of metal-framed chairs sits along the walkway. A single security light at the office end throws hard cones across the asphalt. The road in front of the property runs quiet at this hour; Kiama is asleep.

Motel 617 was photographed at 02:02 on 7 April 2018, on the South Coast 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 and Princes Highway corridor, north on the Pacific, west on the Great Western. Drive-thru reception, parking in front of the rooms, low rise. The number-as-name pattern (617 being the property's street address) was a 1980s and 1990s Australian motel-branding flourish that compressed location and identity into a single sign.