Twenty-six rooms under the range
A long low building on Barrett Drive, with a twenty-metre pool and a verandah you can live on. The casino is in the block beyond the water.
Built in 1979, reworked in 2014, and low on purpose
Everything here is one storey. The building runs east to west, so the long walls face north and south, and the verandah along the north side is three and a half metres deep. The rooms sit behind it, in shade from eleven in the morning until the sun has gone.
Twenty-six rooms, a bar and dining room in the middle, a twenty-metre pool with a shade sail over the long side, and, beyond the water, a low block that holds the gaming room.
Rooms
Twenty-six, all on one level
Built
1979, reworked 2014
Town
Four minutes by car
Desk
Staffed 6:00 to 23:00
Four kinds, twenty-six in all
Three and a half metres of roof, and why
In December the sun is almost overhead at noon, and a deep verandah keeps it off the wall completely. In June it sits low enough to slip in under the roof and reach the back of the room, and by then you are glad of it.
It is the oldest trick in Territory building, and the 1979 architect made good use of it. The 2014 work left it alone.
A casino past the far end of the pool
The low block belongs to the hotel. It stands beyond the water at the end of the same verandah, and the casino inside it is run by the hotel itself. There are eleven tables and a bar, open five evenings a week.
It is about seventy paces from the desk, and you are under cover all the way. Northern Territory law puts the age at 18, and photo ID is checked at the door on every visit.
Twenty metres, shaded down one side
Open from six in the morning until ten at night. The shade sail covers the long side from eleven, which is when it starts being necessary and roughly when the first people appear.
The pool is not heated. From June to August the water sits at about eighteen degrees and the regulars swim anyway, which visitors tend to call either admirable or mad.