The Oaks Motel

The Oaks Motel carries its name on a pole sign at the kerb in a serif face picked out in white against a backlit cream panel. The building behind the sign is single-storey, brick, with the room doors facing the front carpark under a continuous awning. The brick is dark, the trim a cream along the fascia. A row of large oak trees along the front of the property gives the motel its name; the trees are tall, mature, and provide shade across the carpark during daylight. The carpark is empty in the small hours. A single security light at the office end throws hard cones across the asphalt.

The Oaks Motel was photographed at 01:36 on 7 April 2018, on the south Illawarra 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. Tree-themed motel names were a standard postwar Australian flourish, with the surrounding garden plantings often the property's primary character.