Copyright (0000) Australian

Grand ambience: In a pinch, the Hotel Corones balcony serves as a cricket pitch

Faded beauty retains style

ROOM AT THE INN

By Chris Pritchard

The Australian

11th June 2005

Harry Corones died in Room 39. British aviator Amy Johnson bathed in champagne in one of the bathrooms. Singing star Gracie Fields waved to fans from a balcony that runs the length of the building, a walkway local lads have used as a cricket pitch.

Corones, a rags-to-riches Greek migrant from Kythera, made his money running rough-hewn outback pubs. But he craved something classier. So, in 1924, he began construction of a hotel in Charleville, southwest Queensland, to carry his name, a project completed five years later. Corones was the hands-on boss until his death in 1972.
Karl Aschhoff, an urbane German-born hotelier now retired in Charleville, runs daily tours of the hotel as a prelude to Devonshire tea in its restaurant. Aschhoff has a seemingly limitless stock of anecdotes – a repertoire fuelled by old photographs, framed letters and assorted bric-a-brac that fill the public areas.

Part of the lobby was once a ladies' writing room where unaccompanied women could meet for a drink (rather than to pen letters), without breaking local segregation laws. A marker reveals floods in 1990 reached almost to the top of a marble fireplace in a ground-floor living room. A ballroom-sized upstairs space in this two-storey building is now a cluttered museum, crammed with more photographs and an exhibition of clothing worn by society ladies during the property's heyday.

Four heritage rooms have access to a giant terrace overlooking Charleville's streetscape. These bedrooms, the only accommodation in the 40-room hotel with ensuite bathrooms, are superb value and are the lodgings to specify when making a booking. My big, clean and comfortable room has no computer port, an omission that begins to seem as unimportant as the small size of the television screen when I examine strange items displayed on the dressing table – such as a hairbrush and clothes brush from the 1930s.

Such items, Aschhoff acknowledges, have occasionally "walked" because, as with the restaurant's silverware, collectors have found them impossible to resist. He refuses to name the retired politician who mailed back a salt and pepper set "accidentally removed" in an act of youthful indiscretion many years ago.

The hotel passed from the Corones family to other owners, fell on hard times and ended up in the hands of receivers from whom it was bought by the current proprietor a year ago. Improvements are promised but, even now, this faded gem oozes bygone opulence. "It needs work," Aschhoff says. "But it's still rather grand."

None of this should imply that checking in means roughing it. Accommodation, though spacious, is of tired four-star standard – but to gaze up at the embellished ceilings is to be reminded that this part of the Hotel Corones was elegantly five-star in its heyday. The whisper-inducing ambience of a tastefully refurbished old building may be missing but the grandeur still lures. It is like spending time with a classy old dowager who has fallen on hard times but retains oodles of attitude.

Chris Pritchard was a guest of Tourism Queensland.
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CHECKLIST
Hotel Corones: 33 Wills Street, Charleville, Queensland 4470. Phone (07) 4654 1022; www.hotelcorones.com
Tariff: Heritage rooms, $75 single; $85 double.
Getting there: Daily flights from Brisbane or drive to Charleville, 758km west of Brisbane.
Checking in: History buffs, stargazers, agribusiness corporate types.
Stepping out: Good Thai food is served at the cheap and cheerful Young Tiger, almost next door. Best espresso and croissants are at Heinemann's Bakery. Charleville Historic House overflows with memorabilia of the area. Charleville Visitor Information Centre has Heritage Trail maps for on-foot exploration or driving.
Brickbats: Bar noise and country and western music seep up to guestrooms on weekends.
Bouquets: Cheery service and rich history at true bargain rates.

© The Australian

See also,

Harry Corones. A profile. And photograph of the Hotel Corones in the early years