A single-storey motel stretches low across the frame under a black sky. Fluorescent light spills from beneath a corrugated iron awning onto cream-coloured walls and closed white doors. Terracotta pots sit evenly spaced along the concrete walkway. A metal bench and a wheelie bin stand between rooms. The car park is empty. A red LED sign reads "FROM $79." Power lines cut across the darkness above the roofline.
Yetholme sits on the Great Western Highway between Lithgow and Bathurst, roughly 160 kilometres west of Sydney. The village grew around the railway in the late nineteenth century. The motel serves the long stretch of road through the Blue Mountains tablelands, where distances between towns run wide and fuel stops grow sparse.