In 1898, Walter Powell, a Fremantle clerk and merchant, was granted a publican's license to trade in liquor at a hotel opposite Coogee Beach.

There was already a small building on the site, an area known as Four-mile Well, with two bedrooms and two sitting rooms, owned by Powell's wife Letitia.

Cycling, cricket, hunting and shooting clubs all used the hotel as a base or a rest point in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The racecourse was shaped like a tennis racket, with the handle being the home straight, and the races were treated as a day out for many local families who came to picnic on the hill above the hotel.

[12] Picnics such as these, and parties like the race and sports meetings, could regularly bring crowds of over two hundred people into the hotel's vicinity.

Regular patrons of the hotel were local meat workers, lime kiln operators, market gardeners, and labourers.

It was built by a Mr. Burnett, whose daughter Ruby married Powell's son, Frank, and whose family initially ran the store.

There was a post office and store located less than a mile to the south of the hotel, run by Powell's sister Blanche and brother Fred.

[24] In 1930, the Orphanages Committee of the Anglican Diocese of Perth purchased the premises for £A 641,[25] intending to use it as a holiday house for their girls' home.

[26] Initially the arrangement was that the girls would stay in the old hotel, and the boys would camp out in the dunes on Coogee Beach, as had been the practice in earlier years.

[25] In 1946, Perth was suffering a severe post-war housing shortage, and squatting was a constant problem for property owners in affected areas.

Orphanage officials were concerned that this would occur at Coogee, and agreed to set up a permanent branch there, under the supervision of Mrs. Ellen Logan.

These local business owners, employees, and families took great interest in the welfare of the children, taking them on outings, and raising money to buy them entertainments and furniture, including a projector to play films, a piano, a radio, and a television.

[25] The orphanage board decided that as the number of children in their care was declining, and the Coogee property's managers were considering retirement, they would close the branch and sell the hotel and land to Main Roads.