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Meet Kate, who fell in love with country motels
I
S THERE anything more unloved than a motel? Probably their highlights were the introduction of the vibrating bed, the postage paid keys for the absent-minded, tiled baths and showers, bolted-down TVs and the mini-bar. That, and uniform brown and sickyellow colours.
The arrival of Airbnb was probably another nail in the motel coffin. But they struggle on, as Daylesford’s Kate Berry knows, as she undertakes to celebrate them in life and online. She’s started at Charlton, a struggling wheat town of about 900 people on the Avoca River, at the junction of the Calder and Borung highways, almost halfway between Melbourne and Mildura. Every joint there was booked out earlier this month when 350 out-of-towners arrived to listen to a hot new Melbourne band and celebrate, yes, the Charlton Motel. Kate was three and a half hours into a road trip with her two daughters when she came across this neglected motel with its beer taps stuffed since the big flood two years ago. “I love these motels just as they are, and the people who run them are just as big a gem as these time capsules,” says Kate. “I just want people to get in the car and drive and go and visit them. My favourite thing was getting in my 66 HD station wagon (now, it’s a 2013 VW), open the sun visor and head off.” When photographing Charlton she ventured into the motel’s restaurant, with its tables set with fake flower posies, and thought of giving the place a boost with some bands. “I’m obsessed with music and I love using places for reasons for which they were not originally designed.” So, on August 25, Tropical F… Storm, a band led by Gareth Liddiard, formerly of The Drones, let rip. Roast pork and curly parsley were on the retro menu, with a vegie lasagne and curry as the population grew by a third, with both pubs and two motels full and the overflow camping at the footy club. The town threw a breakfast for visitors. This was quite a feat for energetic Kate, 42, whose challenging attitude led to her expulsion from Mr Eliza's Toorak College in Year 11. This daughter of an advertising man and mother who had many jobs went off to the Melbourne School of Art at 15, worked in a design studio and, after a spell waitressing in London, achieved her dream of working as a graphic designer there at 24. Returning home, she married and had Maya, now 14, while establishing one of Melbourne’s first laneway cafes, Switchboard, in the Manchester Unity building in 2005. Two years later she spent time in Sydney, then Ballarat before moving to Daylesford via Yandoit with her partner, writer Rohan Anderson. The bullying of Maya because she had non-packaged food at school was a moving force for Kate and her then eight-year-old to start a blog, Lunch Lady, which evolved into a magazine now sold across the US, UK, Europe, Japan and New Zealand.
But the effort of producing a 160-page quarterly magazine for two years ended with Kate in Castlemaine Hospital with exhaustion. Undaunted, she took on a three-day a week Melbourne marketing job. That lasted seven months and two people replaced her. “It was terrifying when I quit, but then I was asked to write a book in the original format of Lunch Lady, based around being a parent and Maya's favourite recipes.” And so to Charlton where, next Melbourne Cup weekend, she hopes to expand the celebration to three days, using the old Rex Theatre and East Charlton Hotel. “I have no fear. I always think that I’m very lucky making a living doing what I have done, while knowing that work can be a soul-crusher for some people. Yet, as the American singer Bill Callahan says, `No matter how far wrong you’ve gone, you can always turn around'."
Words: Kevin Childs | Images: Contributed
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