ARMCHAIR JOURNEY
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday February 5, 2011
Great Australian Historic HotelsBy Barry StoneAllen & Unwin, 255pp, $29.99IF EVER there was a book that screamed out for high-quality paper and full-colour treatment, this is it. The cover, in full, glossy colour, depicts the gorgeously ornate and elegant Queenscliff Hotel on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula. The text, on pages 233-239, is on standard-issue paperback paper and accompanied by five black-and-white photographs. It looks lifeless and drab.The idea for the book is a good one: arrange Australia's best hotels into city hotels, suburban hotels, homesteads, in country towns, grand mansions and, quite inaccurately, fit another three in a category named "by the sea" (there is no way Coolangatta Estate near Berry can be fairly described as "by the sea" but that's another matter). Then write an entertaining history of each hotel.The problem is Stone can't decide what he wants to do. Too often he slides past the hard research that would have yielded fascinating anecdotes and opts, instead, for personal reminiscences. ("If you're married and have two young boys like I do" is the opening to a chapter on Jenolan Caves House. It adds little that is meaningful.)A number of genuinely famous hotels are omitted, so his decision to include places that are not strictly hotels is strange.Milton Park, for example, was for most of its life a private residence for the Hordern family; Poltalloch Station is a working property that offers accommodation.Too often there are missed opportunities. Sydney's historic Grace Hotel includes information that can be accessed from its walls. It would have been easy to go beyond the building's bare history and bring it alive with anecdotes and unusual information that is the essence of the guided tour.The book does offer a useful list of some of the country's more notable hotels but the absence of entries on the iconic pubs at Birdsville, Tibooburra and Daly Waters, to name a few, raises questions about the accuracy of the title.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald