What the verandah is actually doing
Guests notice the verandah because it is three and a half metres deep, which is a lot, and because the chairs on it are comfortable. What it is doing is arithmetic.
In late December the sun at noon here is about 89 degrees above the horizon, which is as close to straight up as it gets anywhere. A roof that sticks out three and a half metres puts the whole north wall, and the whole of every north-facing window, in shade from mid-morning until mid-afternoon. The wall never gets hot, so the room behind it never has to be cooled down from hot.
In late June the noon sun is about 42 degrees. The same roof lets it in under the edge and it reaches roughly two metres into the room, which warms the floor through the middle of the day. In a place where the night before was four degrees, that sun is welcome: it is the heating.
None of this is clever or new. Every verandah in the Territory was built to do it, before air conditioning made it optional to think about, and it is why this building, ordinary concrete block, costs about a third of what the newer hotels on the same road spend on cooling.
The 2014 architects wanted to glaze part of it in. They were talked out of it by the builder, who had grown up in Tennant Creek.