Fawkner's Hotel

Here we could get a glass of bad rum and plenty of water but paying a good price for the same; but we could not get anything to eat nor a place to sleep in.

The house was erected of quartering and broad pailings, with a half-pailing, half shingle roof and hard-wood flooring.

It was more properly one-and-a-half than two-stories in height, for the second or upper compartment was an attic, subdivided into bedrooms or "sleeping ovens," close enough in winter, but stuffy, stifling, and almost unendurable in the hot season.

The ground floor contained six appartments of divisions, the front quarter facing the river was especially reserved for the accommodation of the most respectable customers.

The bar was at the back, and over the door was elevated a signboard, on which was daubed rather than painted a row of large unevenly-sized, ill-proportioned letters, which a stranger after some hesitation deciphered to be Fawkner's Hotel.

Here he established a queer sort of table d'hote ... over which he invariably presided himself, and in distributing the viands he was not only capricious but preemptory.

"[5]Fawkner had brought his personal book collection from Launceston and guests in the hotel were free to use it in the reading room, while others had to pay a subscription.

[13] The building featured "spacious parlours of great height," 20 beds and, being located higher up the hill from his old hotel, the upper rooms and balcony commanded views of the river, the shipping in Port Phillip Bay and of Williamstown.

Accommodation cost two guineas per week[15] Its greater prominence higher up the hillside meant it often appears in contemporary images of early Melbourne.

Among the visitors who stayed at the hotel was Lady Jane Franklin, the wife of the former Governor of Tasmania, and her entourage, who arrived in April 1839.

He knew a civil administrator would soon arrive and one of his first duties would be to order an official survey of the Crown Land on which the settlement stood.