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Airlie BeachTevaiora
The hotel seen from the lawn, with the pool terrace along the front

Twelve rooms on the hill above Pioneer Bay

Built in 1968 for the cane company, run as a hotel since 1991, and still the same three low wings around the same lawn.

  • Twelve roomsSix on the west wing, six on the east. No room is above another.
  • One sitting at nightThe Long Table seats twenty-four at seven. Breakfast runs from six.
  • Five tablesThe gaming room is behind the kitchen, on the ground floor, open five evenings.

The house

A cane company built it, and it has not changed shape since

The Proserpine mill put this house up in 1968 so that its buyers had somewhere to sleep when they came down to the coast. Three wings, single storey, stumps under the floor and a roof that runs two and a half metres past the wall on every side. Nobody has added a storey and nobody is going to.

We took it on in 1991. Since then we have replaced the roof twice, rewired it once, and left the plan alone. The rooms are the rooms the mill built. The breezeway is where it was. The ice room at the back is still the ice room, although it no longer holds ice.

What the house is made of

Site plan of the three wings around the lawn Three low wings stand around a lawn and a pool. The north wing holds the hall, the desk and the gaming room. The east and west wings hold the guest rooms. Begley Street runs along the south edge. North wing: hall, desk, kitchen, gaming room West wing six rooms East wing six rooms Lawn Pool Begley Street
The three wings, the lawn and the pool, with Begley Street along the south edge.

Rooms

Verandah rooms, upper rooms, and two on the corners

Every room opens onto a verandah and every verandah is deep enough to sit on in rain. Six rooms take the morning, six take the afternoon, and the two on the corners take both.

There is no lift because there is nothing to lift to. There is no minibar. There is a kettle, a fan, air conditioning that works, and a wardrobe with real hangers.

The twelve rooms

A verandah room with its louvred doors folded back

The gaming room

The casino room is the old ice store behind the kitchen

It is part of this house. The casino floor holds five tables and a short bar, and it opens on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. The cane company kept block ice in this room for the fishing boats until the town got mains refrigeration in 1974, which is why the walls are nine hundred millimetres thick and why it stays cool without working at it.

From the front desk you turn right into the breezeway, pass the laundry door, and the room is at the end: forty paces, all of it under roof. There is a person on that door for the whole of every opening hour, and the rule at that door is 18 and a photograph identity document, every time.

What the room is like

Ground floor plan showing the walk from the desk to the ice room The entrance opens on the hall. The hall runs past the desk to a roofed breezeway, which passes the laundry and the kitchen and ends at the door of the gaming room at the back of the ground floor. Entrance hall Front desk Breezeway roofed, open sides Laundry Gaming room five tables, one bar forty paces, all of it under roof
From the desk, along the breezeway, past the laundry, to the door at the back.

The bay

Pioneer Bay is at the bottom of the hill

It is four hundred metres down Begley Street to the lagoon and the esplanade. The marina is a kilometre east. Boats leave for the islands from there in the morning and come back in the late afternoon, and we will hold dinner for you if you say so at breakfast.

Getting about

Loungers along the pool terrace in the afternoon

Gaming happens in one room of this house and nowhere else. The Tevaiora Room takes no bets online, holds no accounts and processes no payments through this website.