They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway and they’re still shining, too, in Bendigo, where the gaudy brilliance of a sign on Barnard Street flashes reminders of long summer drives and cold winter nights on the road.

The iconic sign for the Ararat Central Motel in, you guessed it, western Victoria. Credit:Simon Schluter

In country Australia, at the end of a tiring highway journey, we have for nearly more than 70 years found the perfect antidote to the trials and tempers of the long drives demanded by our sprawling landscape.

Pull into almost any town and you’d invariably find the familiar comforts of a circular driveway, a fenced off pool, a squat brick building, a bright light flashing a Vacancy sign – and the promise of a warm bed, with breakfast in the morning served through a hatch in the wall.

The famous breakfast hatch at The Oval Motel in Bendigo.Credit:Simon Schluter

Entertainment at the City Centre Motel in Bendigo.Credit:Simon Schluter

Never mind that the toast might be cold to middling warm, or the coffee less than city quality. This was about the comfort of familiarity in the classic country motel. Not for nothing did some of them include the word comfort in the name.

And in 2021, those magical havens live on – tweaked and tarted up here and there, to be sure, in order to meet modern sensibilities at least halfway. But for many travellers, the old-style charm is the point.

It’s a nostalgia trip and the prompt for countless cultural touchstones. With Australian motels inspired in the 1950s by the American blueprint – both countries sharing the need for regular stops across wide expanses – motels summon memories of rock’n’roll and renegades on the lam.

They’re Johnny Cash. Hunter S. Thompson. Thelma and Louise. They’re gritty and working class. Pull up in something with just a hint of chrome and you’re in a Tarantino movie.

As Peter Saunders, owner of the Beaufort Motel, puts it: “My kids used to describe it as what you see in the horror movies – the old motel with the old blinking sign.”

Gary and Carolyn, owners of The Oval Motel.Credit:Simon Schluter

Motels are still busy, especially in pandemic times when travelling often means a home-state road trip rather than a flight to distant places. And there are always the business folk on the road. On week nights, the carparks are filled with the vehicles of tradies and company reps. On weekends, tourists fill the rooms.

Documentary maker Ted McDonnell seeks them out wherever he can. “I do as a preference, especially when I’m travelling in Australia,” he says. “The older-style ones are absolutely fantastic, they’re very authentic. They’re a bit more homely, I think because they’re run by families so they have a bit more of a caring nature. They’ve still got that family connection and they treat people so well.

“They look out for people, You ask them what’s the best pub in the town, and they know exactly where to point you, or the best restaurant, or where you can get some Thai food or some Chinese food. They know.”

McDonnell says the motels have also adapted to the times, even while they have kept the bells and whistles of times gone by such as the neon signs. “In my experience they’ve still had to adapt, especially in recent years,” he says.

The Creswick Motel, in Creswick, Victoria.Credit:Simon Schluter

“What they offer can’t be just a quilt and an old pillow. They offer what you want. Microwaves, internet, TVs with Netflix and so on. They’ve had to change because of the large corporations in the hotel industries that are in the country now that offer that whiz-bang type experience, which some people want.

“But other people want a bit more of a family experience. That’s the key to them.”

At the Oval Motel in Bendigo, where that neon sign on Barnard Street is the star of the show, owners Gary and Carolyn Gibson know that nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool.

“We still use the breakfast hatches, people love them,” Gibson says.

“We had some Japanese people filming the breakfast coming through the hatch. We get fathers coming in with their kids and saying, ‘Look, this is what we used to do’. And our neon sign is the original one. That’s a classic, it’s probably the only one in Bendigo.”

The Great Western Hotel, in Great Western Victoria. Credit:Simon Schluter

The biggest change, he says, is in the size of the cars he finds parked outside the front doors of his rooms. “The cars are the main thing that’s changed. Now they’re like trucks.”

In Horsham, Ross Tattam sees much the same at the Darlot Motel, which he runs with his wife, Tracey.

“The regional salesmen that would have once traversed the Wimmera district have now been replaced by the travelling tradie,” says Tattam, who also celebrates the camaraderie of country motel owners.

“There’s no competition really, we all try to help each other out. We have to. If a large group comes through, you still have to look after your regulars.”

Documentary maker Ted McDonnell: “The older-style ones are absolutely fantastic, they’re very authentic.”Credit:Simon Schluter

Peter Saunders, who runs the Beaufort Motel, offers history. “The younger ones like to say, ‘It’s my grandma’s decor’,” he says. “We’ve tried to keep everything as original as possible.”

And he delivers welcome charms such as the Imperial Egg Gallery, attached to the motel, where his mother, Margaret, displays what he says is the biggest collection of decorated eggs in the southern hemisphere.

It is a fresh part of a long history that stretches back to the middle of last century. The site of Australia’s first motel is not entirely clear – some place it on the Gold Coast in 1949, others with Melbourne’s first motel, which opened in Oakleigh in south-east Melbourne (the Oakleigh Motel was demolished in 2010 and is now an apartment building in Dandenong Road).

The first in NSW, the Belair Motel in Orange, also opened in 1957 and is still taking guests 64 years later as the Mid-City Motor Lodge. But these were latecomers, compared with the first motel in the US, which opened in San Luis Obispo, north of Los Angeles, in 1925. If only those walls could talk.

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