hotelcorones

Dining room of the Hotel Corones, ca. 1930

from State Library of Queensland

• Vesna Verencevic said:

  Out here they call it Poppa’s Place or Harry’s place. Its official name, however, is the Hotel Corones. It is named after its proprietor, Harry Corones, one of the richest men in the west. The number one hotel in Western Queensland with a State-wide reputation for pleasant living, it is at the same time the most western and the least western of any hotel beyond the Great Divide. It is most western in its spaciousness — not the length and breadth of its rooms, but the atmosphere brought to them by the outback people who make it their town headquarters. It is made un-western by the other people who come to it — a wide variety of people who are classifiable only by the fact that they are not westerners. Some of their names in the hotel register make it read like an extract from Who’s Who? THE hotel itself is a long white, double storied building in Charleville’s main street, built in 1929 at a cost of £50,000. Its main feature is the big green summer lounge with the marble floor which you enter as soon as you pass through the doors of Corones. This is where the westerners and the non-westerners meet and mingle and talk things over. This lounge is the hub of social life in the Warrego for eight months of the year. For the other four — the cold months — it moves up to the top floor where the same thing occurs before a log fire. At the back of the hotel there is a sun porch and a piazza. THE story of Harry Corones is the old success story. As a young man of Greek parentage he came to the town 40 years ago, and started a small cafe. A fire set him back, but after he became established in the hotel Charleville, and after that the present Corones. In all the present hustle of his guests celebrating the district’s centenary he’s undisturbed. Grey-haired, with a towel over his shoulder, he shuffled through his hotel on errands of supervision. Assisting him is gentle Mrs. Corones, also grey-haired. His trade connections extend beyond Corones. If you sit down in the dining room you may use a serviette marked Hotel Charleville, or at night you may sleep on a pillow with a label from one of two hotels at Quilpie. These are all operated by his family. If you go dancing in Charleville he will probably dance in Corones’ Hall, next door to the hotel. Outside of business, he takes a prominent part in town affairs, being on the fire brigade, ambulance, and hospital boards. The up-to-date Charleville hospital is his special interest. He is interested in golf but says he is now growing too old to play it and extends benevolent patronage over other sports. But Corones is his chief interest. And he is confident that one day in the distant future Corones itself will celebrate a centenary. – Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld), Thursday 6 November 1947. Source: timegents.com/2017/11/13/hotel-corones-charleville/