Pacific Garden Hotel

Two storeys of brown brick face the night at the Pacific Garden Hotel. Blue doors repeat at even intervals, numbered 201 through 204 along the upper walkway, the ground floor matching below. A steel staircase with mesh treads and tubular railings climbs from a concrete pad set into damp grass. Security lights throw warm cones across the brickwork. Every door is closed. The lawn glistens. There are no cars, no movement, no figures on the walkways. The light from the security fittings is the only thing changing in the frame.

The Pacific Garden was one of the hotel-motels along the highway, an end of the typology that sat closer to the publican model than to the pure motor inn. Hotel Motel 101 photographed 102 traditional Australian motor inns across three runs out of Sydney over 2018, 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. The series was shot at night because that is when these buildings are at their most photographic, lit only by the fittings the operator had paid to leave on, and quiet enough that the architecture had nothing to compete with.