|
 KATRINA Little remembers picking up her parents from dinner at Hadleys in central Hobart.
Hobart-born Ms Little has come home to manage the historic inner-city hotel, which is busy trebling its capacity with a $30 million extension.
Ms Little was working for the Accor chain in Melbourne when the opportunity to take on the Grand Mercure Hadleys came up.
She didn't hesitate: ``I'd always said the only property I'd come back for was Hadleys.''
The building still reeks of history. You walk off busy Murray Street and feel that you might have slipped into a prior century. A sitting room opposite reception is an ideal rendezvous spot or place for guests to gather their thoughts and plan the day.
Beyond reception the central 1834 restaurant occupies an atrium with a
skylight two storeys above. The restaurant was named for the date that the site's first hotel, the Golden Anchor, opened for business and the current building was built by convicts in 1849. J. C. Hadley bought the hotel in the late 1800s and his family operated it for 55 years.
Tasmania's Doherty Group bought the property in 1999 and has driven the current expansion.
Photos around the walls are reminders of the hotel's strong links to the
Antarctic.
Those veterans of what historians call the heroic age of Antarctic
exploration, Douglas Mawson and Roald Amundsen, both mention Hadleys in their memoirs.
Other guests have included the businessman Henry Jones and movie star Errol Flynn.
We've arrived after 8pm but can still sample the fare in the famous 1834 restaurant if we settle in quickly. There's metered parking outside and it's strange to think that because we are arriving late and leaving early, we can park on the street in central Hobart without a worry. Guests normally leave their cars off-site at the nearby Trafalgar Car Park. The extended Hadleys, which will bump the number of rooms from 71 to nearly 200, will have its own car park.
Ms Little, who learnt the finer points of the hospitality industry working
as a steward at Government House before adding several hotel management roles to her CV, is understandably excited about the expansion, which will rise to eight storeys behind old Hadleys with views of the Derwent.
``It will be the iconic hotel in Tasmania,'' Ms Little says, pointing out St
David's Cathedral across Murray Street, the CBD within a stone's throw and those river views.
The new Hadleys will be done in a heritage style, half apartments and half hotel rooms. There will be a strong European influence in the design (think wooden shutters) and the new facilities will include a wedding centre and a 120-space Argentine grill.
That's the near future. Back in the present, we are a party of four settling in for the night.
Wife Sallie and I are going to eat at 1834 while 11-year-old son Solomon and his mate, Connor Claridge, settle into our stylish double-door suite on the third floor.
I arrive in the room to find the boys have made themselves at home,
donning white dressing gowns, sitting in plush leather chairs that give a satisfying whoosh of escaping air when you settle into them. The only thing the contented lads seem to be missing is a pipe.
The boys belie their old-world appearance by watching television and
inhaling pizza _ what would Mawson think?
My first trip into the restaurant left me in no doubt about our meal choice.
The 1834 Seafood Tier had already been served to another table and there was only one way to diminish the envy.
``We'll have what they're having.''
The Seafood Tier has three levels of seafood. The bottom two tiers contain oysters kilpatrick and cold seafood such as prawns, huge rolls of smoked salmon, cajun smoked trevally and pickled octopus. The cooked seafood is on the top level and has a wonderful selection of crab claw, battered prawns, crumbed scallops and (burp, excuse me) blue-eyed trevalla.
We waddle upstairs to the room where the pizza-munchers are pushing for a movie. I'm trying to think suitably Antarctic thoughts because the wall photos and the history have worked their magic.
It would seem the right thing to sit at the fine wooden desk, unsheath a
quill and craft a stern letter to the Colonial Secretary about the funding
shortfall for my voyage to the great south land.
But there are boys to entertain so we settle instead for the rocket-laden birds under the remote control of Danny DeVito's evil genius The Penguin in the 1992 movie Batman Returns.
The old of Hadleys meets the new of pragmatic child-minding.
There will be a bit of old Hadleys meeting new Hadleys in September when the expansion is complete.
It should be something spectacular.
The writer was a guest of Grand Mercure Hadleys.
Travelways; for all your Tasmania Accommodation |
