New renovations, retro vibes: reviving Australia’s rundown motels
Buildings that once catered to 1950s road trippers are being transformed into boutique stays attracting a younger demographic
Motel Molly is giving vacay vibes. It’s giving idyllic. It’s giving “hot girl summer” lives on in Mollymook, a town on the New South Wales south coast.
I’m in an oceanside room in one of four colour-themed buildings called Capri, Olive, Limoncello and Rosé. My room in the latter comes in pinks from powder to peach, coral and mauve with – squee! – a Smeg fridge and kettle in a high-gloss fairy-floss colourway. Elsewhere are rattan chairs, Scandi-style ceramics, glasses etched with frosted cursive font and a throw tufted with designs that vaguely evoke the US south-west.
Motel Molly’s fun, feminine and retro aesthetic is shared across most of the Australian motels popping up out of the bones of buildings that originally welcomed road trippers from the 1950s to the 80s. Just when you think the zeitgeist is at its zenith, another opens: Casita Motel in Batemans Bay, promising “escape to a summer state of mind”; The Shores on the Gold Coast, promising “poolside vibes, vintage charm and endless sunshine”.
Unlike the high-rise condominiums that have transformed places like the Gold Coast, the new-old motels are capped at two storeys and tend to offer roomier proportions and more fresh air than boxy new-build hotels in an equivalent price point.
Renovating existing buildings is less wasteful than constructing a new hotel. Which doesn’t mean it’s easy. Berry View Hotel in Berry, also on the south coast, was in dire shape when builders “took the roof off and stripped it all out”, according to its general manager, Peter Holcombe. “The pool was horrendous green and curtains were nailed to walls.”
Now, people pull over to photograph the motel’s tangerine-coloured doors and stylish pool area. The backlash from locals wary of development is over, Holcombe says; they now see its cheery facade as “the gateway to Berry”.
On the mid-north coast, in Crescent Head, vans circle like sharks near the point break beach; boards on top with fins up like a finger to the wind – best when blowing offshore from the west and paired with an east-south-east swell. You can buy oysters in the bottle shop and prawns from a truck. A dirt road ambling south through Limeburners Creek national park leads to some blissful back beaches.
“It’s just a cool vibe here,” says George Gorrow, the designer and hotelier known for founding the denim brand Ksubi. In 2016 he opened The Slow hotel in Canggu, Bali, with his wife, Cisco Tschurtschenthaler, and in 2023 the couple opened Sea Sea Hotel in Crescent Head. Their goal of “surf shack meets Alpine lodge meets Bavarian hunting hut” was squarely achieved in a meticulous remodel of an existing motel.
Sea Sea’s breezy indoor-outdoor restaurant and bar made waves in a town that even the most loyal of locals admit had no decent food options. Now, thanks to Sea Sea, it’s got everything from chef takeovers featuring “tide to table” menus to bar staff who know their vermentinos from their viogniers on a list curated by Mike Bennie, the founder of Sydney’s natural wine-focused store P&V Wine and Liquor.
With date-night lighting buzzed by group-hang vibes, the music is curated by Gorrow’s friends at Reverberation Radio in Los Angeles. The same tunes play in the rooms, cabled into bespoke speakers that double as bedside tables.
The couple are trendsetters – so what’s in store for “Creso”, some resident now wonder. The owner of the Station Boardstore, JJ, says the town is “about 60/40” for and against Sea Sea. “Some people think it’s a bit swanky and say, ‘If you want that kind of thing go to Byron,’” he says.
Gorrow gets it. He came here loads as a kid on surf trips with his dad. “The last thing we want is for this place to turn into the new Byron Bay,” he says. There was already a hotel here, he points out, but the owners “had lost the love”. Aside from doing a cracking trade in milestone birthday parties, Sea Sea is booking local bands, showcasing artists and surf films and has put in nearly 3,000 plants. “It will take time to earn our stripes with all the locals but we’re off to a good start,” Gorrow says.
In 2022 the Timothée Resort opened in Busselton, Western Australia, marketing its original 1980s breakfast hatches, because who doesn’t love near-extinct mod cons? They aren’t used for cornflakes, Tip Top bread and sachets of Nescafé though, because like all of the new-old motels the Timothee Resort has read the room and knows nostalgia is a visual lure only. Breakfast here is an all-local Margaret River affair with bagels and schmear, oven-baked granola, cold-pressed juice and rip-and-drip filter coffee.
The motels’ original heyday is documented by the architecture enthusiast and comedian Tim Ross in Motel: Images of Australia on Holidays. He writes that the uptake of cars in the 50s, and boredom with pub stays, made motels with en suites, a pool and colour TVs “a stylish and sophisticated way to travel” for families.
Today’s revamped motels vary considerably in amenities and cost. A midweek booking, off season, at the Berry View – where you have to leave the premises for breakfast – will set you back $175 a night for room with a queen bed, or $160 for a single. A summer weekend stay at Sea Sea, with access to its restaurant, bar, lounge, sauna, ice bath and pool, runs to $503 a night.
If many of the made-over motels’ social media profiles are a sign, the demographic has flipped from families to photogenic young women in swimwear, with a heavy emphasis on Club Med-style imagery.
Is that the kind of retro we want revived? Perhaps it gets others pouncing on the “book now” button but I’m rattled by how uncertain this marketing makes me feel about fitting in. Maybe the motels are simply yielding to the reality of the Instagram algorithm, or, less optimistically, maybe the body positivity movement was just a fleeting fantasy of a more inclusive future. It wouldn’t be the only progressive ideal sinking like a stone right now.
The infantilising touches chafe a little, too. At The Kyah, a delightful motel in Blackheath that provides a much-needed alternative to the Blue Mountains’ typically frilly, fusty accommodation, the “do not disturb” door sign reads: “Soz, not right now … building an awesome pillow fort.”
Even Motel Molly’s cute “Gone for a dip” sign only makes sense when I read the reverse: “Having a snooze”. The quirky mantras feel vaguely dictatorial. Should I be taking a dip? Having a snooze? Building a pillow fort? Probably. Where are my #vacayvibes?
The ubiquity of a single shared aesthetic that idealises the past is perplexing, too. Holidaying merely in another place isn’t enough any more: we want another time.
But no matter how hard they’re trying for Amalfi Coast meets Palm Springs meets 1970s Los Angeles, the overwhelming here and now of Australia prevails. At Motel Molly, the violet-blue skies are filled with screeching birds, the trees hum with insects and the air is salted with sea spray. Unlike the all-pink palette, these appealing features are timeless.