Hotel Australasia, Eden

Eden’s Hotel Australasia appears to have always been looked upon as the town’s ‘jewel in the crown’.

In 1904 a Mrs Sabina Pike paid £500 for a one-acre lot ‘in a commanding position’ at the top of town. Her intention was to erect ‘a large up to date’ 43-room brick hotel in anticipation of Twofold Bay becoming the National Capital’s port.

Her builder erected brick kilns near the town cemetery because good supplies of local clay were available there. A sawmill was erected at Lake Curalo, just north of the town, to supply the timber that the building would require.

‘Quite a small army of men’ were engaged to erect the hotel. The ground floor was completed in April 1905 and the hotel opened its doors in early January 1906.

It was to be described by the Illawarra & South Coast Steam Navigation Company as ‘one of the finest hotels in the state’. After the Australian Governor-General Lord Northcote stayed at the Hotel in 1907 and NSW Governor Sir Harry Rawson visited it in 1908, Mrs Pike was advertising Eden’s Hotel Australasia as having ‘the Patronage of his Excellency Lord Northcote, late Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, and his Excellency Sir Harry Rawson, late State Governor of New South Wales.’

Mrs Pike retained ownership of the hotel until 1923. From then, until it abruptly closed in May 2010, the Hotel Australasia had a succession of owners who regularly extended, altered and renovated the building. The most dramatic of its transformations occurred in the 1950s when its exterior was given a brutalist ‘modern’ update.

Even though the hotel played important roles in the history of and social fabric of Eden it had never been heritage listed. (In 1945, for example, Eden’s Hotel Australasia and Great Southern Hotel were both declared ‘black’ by the local community for allegedly overcharging and not always being open when advertised – and many locals now believe that this community action led to the establishment of the Eden Fishermen’s Club.) So, after the hotel closed in 2010, its demolition became a real possibility – until Bega Valley Shire Council responded to community pressure and bought the property.

Council, amid considerable controversy, ultimately sold the building and site, at a price that enabled the necessary restoration work to be undertaken, to Neil Rankin, a local builder who had promised to restore and return the façade of the building to its original 1906 condition. Over several years Neil faithfully restored the building, as he had promised, so now it is again Eden's architectural 'jewel'.