Marco Polo Motel

The Marco Polo Motel sign stands above its lot on Parramatta Road, photographed at night with the neon lit. The sign is large, double-sided, mounted on a pole that lifts it above the surrounding rooflines. The name is in mid-century script with an arrow pointing to the driveway. Below the main sign is a smaller plaque with the word "Vacancy" still illuminated. Behind it the motel itself sits low and unlit, the rooms long since empty. The road in front is dark and empty. The neon is the only thing burning in the frame.

Roadside motels along Parramatta Road were a postwar response to mass car ownership. The corridor out of Sydney was the highway to the west, and the motels were placed along it for travellers passing through Ashfield, Stanmore, and Annandale. By the 1970s and 1980s the trade had moved off Parramatta Road onto the M4 motorway. Most of the motels closed or were converted. Some, like the Marco Polo, kept their signs lit even after the rooms went dark, the neon paid for as advertising space rather than as a wayfinder. The sign has been a fixture for so long that it now reads as part of the streetscape itself, regardless of whether anyone has stayed there in years.