NOEL BEDDOE reflects on the hotel that started its life in 1924  as Hostel One, a government hostel for federal workers, that became the Hotel Canberra in 1927. Since 1988 it has been known as the Hyatt.

Six English colonies combined, a lifetime and a half ago, to form a new nation.

The resulting Commonwealth prided itself on several qualities – free from the embedded class divisions of Britain we saw ourselves as egalitarian, the land of “the fair go”.

That is unless, of course, you happened to be Aboriginal, in which case it was assumed that you’d have the good taste to die out as a race as soon as was comfortably achievable. 

Nevertheless, we saw ourselves as a place where excellence was our norm in buildings and institutions.

How have we done in maintaining those standards? As far as a fair go is concerned, the defining decision of the last couple of decades was so to construct taxation matters that, when a young couple wanting to buy a home to live in must compete with a wealthy investor for a property, taxation arrangements combined so that the investor would pay, ultimately, about half the price facing the couple, so that the housing market was driven crazy by the wealthy cashing in on a good thing.

As to excellence: in 1911 it was decided that the national capital would be here, a place, at the time, of a couple of farming properties and lots of virgin bushland. 

We must build accommodation to house the scores of public servants and politicians that soon must occupy the city-to-be. The first result was Hostel One, a glorious group of art deco pavilions built around two garden/courtyards with high ceilings, polished wood, glass double doors, comfortable nooks with roaring, open fires in winter.

You can see the standards we set for ourselves, for today Hostel One is the Hyatt Hotel Canberra

Reasons to visit? High tea still is served in The Tea Lounge or on the deep, paved verandahs overlooking gardens; a year’s highlight is Melbourne Cup Lunch, held in gardens if the weather is pleasant; for many Canberrans Christmas lunch at The Hyatt is a regular institution – this year Christmas brunch is an addition to the day’s offerings.

How are standards? 

We attended the Melbourne Cup lunch of 2024; we were late, collected our glasses of French champagne and moved into the garden – all seating was taken.

“How are things?” an attractive young staff member asked. We pointed out that there was nowhere to sit.

”Where would you like to sit?”

Well, over there, in the shade of some delightful shrubbery.

“Sure.”

She went and brought back two comfortable chairs for us. We sat. We’d finished our champagne; she fetched us sparkling wine.

Someone brought a table and placed it in front of us. Someone else brought a linen tablecloth and put it on the table, went away and came back with a lovely posey in a vase and placed it on the tablecloth.

It was a standard of service that, perhaps, doesn’t exist everywhere in Australia today.

Hyatt staff move gracefully, are impeccably dressed and, importantly to me, they uniformly seem to be very happy people, happy in their work of service. 

The hotel has received various notables, heads of state, royalty – management must liaise with various government departments to be aware of appropriate protocols.

I asked Kim Ashton, director of sales and marketing, of an example of a recent celebrity who had stayed overnight. Kim thought, lifted an eyebrow, shrugged and said: “Barack Obama.”

Quite a thought – to paraphrase an old joke, you’re eating your breakfast and the 44th president of the United States passes your table; you don’t react and continue to concentrate on your bacon and eggs – that is savoir faire!

Kim reports that he left behind the reputation as a sensitive, courteous gentleman.

Two days a week the lovely piano work of dinner-suit clad Stuart Warner wafts over The Tea Room – Stuart obviously denies that any music of worth has been written since 1960. He will be playing on Christmas Day.

We can expect plenty of rumination in the next six months as to how we’ve done given the promise of the beginning of our attempt at being a society – in May we celebrate one hundred years of the first sitting of the Australian Federal Parliament in Canberra.

As we think of standards set, achieved, maybe missed in some notable cases, let’s not forget to give due respect to Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel. 

Novelist Noel Beddoe has twice been awarded by The Literature Board of The Australia Council for the Arts.

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