Moskovsky Station, a large waiting hall, quite a stylish interior with a vast network map of St Petersburg stations embossed on one wall. It was however bereft of seating, most people waited inside the fast food outlets down one side of the hall. It was a long walk down the platform to our carriage, when we got there the gruff, unsmiling uniformed woman who checked our tickets and passports before silently waving us onto the train clearly seemed to be from the Soviet school of public relations. I found out later that these female “little Mussolinis” in the RZD (Russian Railways) ‘Army’ are called provodnitsas, there are two of them “ruling the roost” for each carriage. During the journey, they take turns, one works whilst the other “sergeant-major” rests up and hones her stern, disapproving look! We had been forewarned that luggage space in the car was very limited and worked on a “first come, first served” basis, but as it eventuated, once on board there was plenty of space for the luggage.
Sapsan V SapsanThe Sapsan seats were comfortable enough and the ride at a cruising 180-200km an hour a smooth one (didn’t feel like we were going that fast!). We passed through several oblasts with some lovely countryside, especially the lakes to the southern side. Until we got to Tver, hardly any people boarded or disembarked at the stations we stopped at (not many people to be seen outside at all during the trip for that matter). The train’s toilets were clean and up to aircraft standard (unfortunately also aircraft size as well). The food they offered up was pretty ordinary, but OK if you like ‘plastic’ food, the time however passed pretty quickly and we arrived at Moscow inside four hours.
When we disembarked at Moscow Station after a 650km trip it was intriguing to see the nose of our Sapsan resting up against the nose of another Sapsan coming from the opposite direction. Getting off the platform and through the gate with all our luggage was a bit of a mad dash with passengers all over the place, all the trains, east and west, seemed to have been scheduled to arrive at the same time! Still, the journey itself was a pleasant way to travel between the two great European cities of the Russian Federation.
Metro artMetro art – stained glassWe were picked up at the hotel the next morning by our designated, bilingual guide, Julia, a young Moscovite with a strong New York twang in her voice. Before tackling the metropolis she took us for a tour of the Moscow metro stations. We very quickly got a sense that trying to navigate around the Moscow Metro could be is bewildering for new tourists, especially having to contend with signs in the (foreign to non-Russians) Cyrillic script. We had Julia to lead us, but later without her, we would find out just how difficult it is. The train service is very punctual with trains arriving about every minute-and-a-half but the maze of connecting lines (blue, red, grey, etc) takes some figuring out to get to where you want to go. The real pleasure is in visiting the various underground stations to see the art work on the walls and ceilings which varies widely from station to station. Many have stupendous ornate decorations and even grand chandeliers in some. The paintings bordered by beautiful gold-leaved frames and sculptures projected Soviet propagandist aims (eg, Lenin addressing the masses, heroic Soviet soldiers, workers and athletes representing “Homo Sovieticus”, the idealised type of Soviet man). One such 1932 painting in Kiyevskaya Metro that especially caught my eye depicts Trotsky giving a speech with Stalin standing right behind him (greatly ironic given Trotsky’s fate at the hands of Stalin’s henchmen in Mexico some eight years later). It was in the metros, especially at the Ploshchad Revolutsiy Metro where we got our first inkling of how incredibly superstitious Russians are. Moscovite commuter after commuter would walk past the station’s numerous bronze sculptures of heroic Soviet citizens, but most would momentarily halt at the sculptured figure to rub usually either it’s knee or elbow for good luck.
Red Square: looking back towards History MuseumAfter criss-crossing the city to visit many differently-decorated but equally beautiful metros (almost all Moscow stations are underground), we exited the system at Tetranalnaya and entered Red Square near the Museum of the War of 1812. We learned from the Russian guide that ‘Krasnaya’, ‘Red’ in Russian, originally meant ‘beautiful’ and it is this connotation that the Square’s name derives from. Red Square, a huge cobblestone rectangular square (about 330m x 70m), is the centre and focal point of Moscow. To its immediate west is Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall, to the north is the State Historical Museum (and to the left of that the entrance gates to the Alexandrovsky Garden), to the east is Kazan Cathedral, the GUM department store and the Kitay-gorod commercial district, and to the south St Vasily’s (Pokrovsky Cathedral). Because of its centrality it is easy to access most of the top tourist spots from here, with people continually dissecting it to get to the next point of interest. Others just hover there taking in the sheer scope and atmosphere of it all. The Square is also regularly invaded by wedding parties with bride and groom photos in front of St Basil’s the mandatory option for newly-weds.
St Vasily’s CathedralWhen people outside of Russia conjure up a visual image of Moscow, St Basil’s Cathedral (AKA Church of St Vasily’s the Blessed or Pokrovsky Cathedral) is the icon that most associate with the Russian capital. Architecturally not really like any other structure (arguably St Petersburg’s Cathedral of the Savior of the Spilt Blood approximates its opulent design), St Basil’s is an eclectic mix of Russian, Italian, Byzantine and other Eastern styles, comprises a central chapel flanked by nine distinct onion domes with polygonal towers. The domes present a kaleidoscope of colour with their various combinations. Inside, what caught my eye in particular was the arches and entrance walls with their intricate patterns, blended colours and floral motifs. Upstairs, there is a souvenir shop, as well you can listen to a highly accomplished male quartet perform Russian songs from their CD (which you can purchase on site). NB: do not take the narrow spiralling staircase located to the right UNTIL you have seen all of the ground floor, because you cannot return down these stairs and the only exit from the first floor takes you completely outside of the Cathedral. Entry fee (2015) is 250rbl.
Insurrection MetroYou can’t really experience all that St Petersburg has to offer without spending time on Nevsky Prospekt … it’s essential – and unavoidable! Dissecting the city from east to west for some 4.5km, Nevsky Pr is home to St Petersburg’s shopping precinct, restaurants and nightlife. On our first morning we left our hotel in Ligovsky Pr and walked up to the vast Vosstaniya (or Uprising) Square where Nevsky begins. At all times, or so it seems, there is a constant stream of people up and down Nevsky, shopping, wining and dining, sightseeing. On one side of Uprising Square stands Vosstaniya Metro station. On first glance I mistook it for a church, but as railway stations go it is one monumentally impressive building, a stunning but simple pavilion with a sandstone coloured circular colonnade at the top.
Yeliseev’s Food hallThere are a number of attractive Art Nouveau buildings on Nevsky. One that garners a lot of interest and visitors is Yeliseev’s Emporium, a food hall selling fine caviar, vodka & other overpriced Russian gourmet foods. Not as grand or opulent as its Moscow namesake (Yeliseev’s gastronom) which some have compared to London’s Harrods, a claim by any reckoning that is something of an over-stretch! St Petersburg Yeliseev’s in itself is quite a spectacle, from its whimsical window display with little comical figurines to it’s aesthetically pleasing interior. It’s not exactly a place for delicatessen bargain buys but it’s really worth going in for a look at the beautiful decor. On a searingly hot summer’s morning we sat under the ‘shade’ of its giant centrally positioned indoor palm sipping a raspberry lemonade & admired the balustrades & ceiling designs. I was amused by the two old men mannikins in the gold leaf balcony on the back wall who reminded me of Statler and Waldorf, the audience hecklers from the “The Muppets” TV show.
Anichkov bridge & Fountain canalContinuing down Nevsky we soon reached the first of the waterways that gives St Petersburg its famous epithet, “Venice of the North”, Fontanky kanals (the Fountain canal).The bridge on Nevsky Pr that crosses the canal is called Anichkov Most. On each corner is the famous horse sculpture, the “Horse Tamers”. Here, you’ll find the ever-present boat trip touters, locals of all ages who all day energetically spruik boat trips to the public. Even late at night they were still hard at it on the bridge – and at the other canals further along Nevsky, Griboedova and Moika. Many spruikers used a hand-held mike to loudly announce (in Russian) the trips offered by competing boat companies. I wondered about the effectiveness of this method of soliciting for business. Because of all the noise generated by the crowds of people and the normal, heavy motor traffic on Nevsky, I doubted if anyone could make out anything much of what the touts were saying. Whilst here we confirmed our booking for a boat tour for later in the day. Many of the boat trips start from near Anichkov Bridge, although some begin from Neva Embankment (there are many, many options for canal and river tours available in St Petersburg!).
Pseudo-aristocrats & Catherine monumentA little bit past Anichkov Most is Ostrovskogo Square which is as much about peace & tranquility as Anichkov is abuzz with activity. A large monument of Catherine the Great watches over the park and garden. The reform-minded German-born empress is depicted atop a globe with some of the great men of letters & politicians of her day. This pleasant park on Nevsky Pr is a welcome refuge for visitors, a place to “take five” away from the hustle & bustle of the main street. In the tree-lined square I noticed an oddly dressed couple in 18th century period costumes leisurely strolling around the park. Observing them I discovered that they were ‘performers’ touting for tourism business, offering themselves up to visitors to have their photo taken with them at a price. Before leaving the Federation I had learnt that this was a feature common to Russian tourism, at most tourist hotspots (Peterhof, Catherine Palace, Red Square, etc) similarly over-dressed ‘aristocratic’ couples would pop out of the woodwork at the first sight of a tourist!
Heading back past Catherine II’s park we passed the street artists’ quarter where a number of artists sketched portraits for passers-by (oddly the portraitist were all males, all middle-aged or older – just as they had been in Old Arbat in Moscow!). Just along from the park is Gostiny Dvor, St Petersburg’s oldest shopping mall and not ‘tiny’ at all. Gostiny Dvor is all neoclassical elegance on the outside but inside it is rather old-fashioned in its presentation and layout. A handy place still to pop into as it has a free of charge WC.
Elisie the cat in Malaya StreetOne of the more unassuming but interesting little streets running off Nevsky that I took a fancy to is Malaya Sadovaya Ul. On either side of the mall is a bronze cat (one of each sex) perched high on the wall. Walking down the plaza, the idea is to toss a coin at either cat and try to land in on the ledge. The reward for succeeding – guaranteed good luck to the thrower! This is another instance of the potency of Russian shibboleths akin to what I saw in Moscow with the superstitious mania for rubbing the knee of a sculptured bronze figure for luck as you sprint past! The rest of the pedestrian-only street contains other interesting features including a sculpture of a photographer and his dog, a kugel ball fountain which looks like a rum ball sitting on the end of a slice of cake (quite appropriate I think for a street replete with cafés selling sugary tortes and pastries). Malaya Sadovaya’s inviting benches, street lamps and overall relaxed ambience makes it a favourite haunt of young St Petersburgians – especially at night.
View from Singer Cafe (Kazan sobor)Further along Nevsky, near Griboedova canal, we came to another wonderful old Art Nouveau building, Dom Knigi (the House of Books). It’s a very large bookshop, good for a browse (there are even some books here that are not printed in Cyrillic script!) and it’s another handy place to use the toilet gratis on the top floor. By the real reason to stop here is the Singer Cafe … no, not a cafe where you sip coffee or hot chocolate whilst a soloist or some enthusiastic amateur entertains you with a ballad or two, but a reference to the building’s “needle and stitch-work” past. Before the bookworms moved in, Dom Knigi was in fact Singer (or Zinger) House, headquarters of the Russian branch of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Singer Cafe is a bit of an icon on Nevsky Pr and we ended up having a light lunch at the cafe before resuming our walking tour of Nevsky Prospekt & its environs. The cafe had a relaxed, casual air, with staff that were attentive and polite with a good grasp of English. I had salmon pelmeni and a lemonade, more than sufficient to recharge my batteries for more foot-slogging. The upstairs section of this cafe is known for its great views of the panoramic Kazansky Cathedral (directly opposite on the other side of Nevsky) through its supersized square windows.
Coming into the Neva Embankment from the canalAfter taking in a few more of the highlights of Nevsky Pr we backtracked to Anichkov Most for our boat trip. As the boat wound its way up Fontanka canal, criss-crossing the other canals and eventually turning into Moiky, an on-board commentary in Russian was played through a loud-speaker. Fortunately though for us we had our English language guide Valentina sitting with us so we got the translated version face-to-face, essential if we were to get some idea of the different buildings & bridges (very many bridges!) that we were passIng. Our boat was a flat top type, the importance of which was illustrated when we passed under bridges as low as 2.4m or 2.5m!), standing up was not recommended – for reasons of personal health preservation! One of the attendants was standing up on the boat as we were about to pass under one of the lowest bridges. He didn’t appear to be aware of its approach but at the last moment he nonchalantly ducked his head to avoid get it taken off! It unnerved us at the time but it was pretty clear that he knew all along what he was doing and was in fact just ‘showboating’ to impress the punters on board. From the canals we entered the wide and free-flowing waters of the Neva River where we got a good view of the impressive Peter and Paul Fortress. Seeing St Petersburg from the water on the Fontanka, Moiky and Gribeodova canals was a really important (and time-saving) way of getting good views of many of the city’s best buildings. By the time we had returned to Nevsky Prospekt after the two hour cruise we’d had enough of sightseeing for the day and were ready to return to Ligovsky Prospekt and make plans for dinner.
If ever you find yourself on a tour of China, one of the first places you will want to visit is Xi’an, home of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses site and its Museum. Once you get there, while being driven to the venue from Xi’an Xianyang Airport or perhaps from your city hotel after a ride around Xi’an’s impressive City Walls, the chances are that your Chinese tour guide in the course of his or her information talk will bring up the topic of Bill Clinton’s famous 1998 visit. The celebrated occasion has entered into local folklore and Chinese guides are quick to bring up the “special anecdote” concerning the US President in the preamble they give to international tourists on the bus. I’ll get to that story soon enough but first some basic background on the Terracotta Warriors.
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The Yangs do some digging with totally unexpected consequences The whole phenomena of the Terracotta Warriors has its origin in March 1974 when several dirt-poor peasant farmers (thought to be seven in number) in Xiyang village in Lintong County, were digging for water in the dry, forbidding countryside 35km east of Xi’an. One of the farmers, Yang Zhi’fa, struck something hard with his hoe which he thought was a bronze relic of some kind. Digging a bit deeper he discovered the object had the form of a shoulder and torso. The other farmers, thinking they were human remains and fearful of Buddhist superstitions, urged Yang to rebury it so as not to offend the ancestors (ghost lore has been commonplace in the eastern Xi’an region for centuries). Yang was unperturbed and shortly later took the dismembered clay warrior to the Lintong Museum. Before long archaeologists from Beijing were swarming all over the site and so commenced a massive state-run excavation (of three pits) which has unearthed over the course of the last 40 years, an army of terracotta soldiers, horses and chariots, of what is the Mausoleum of the first Chinese Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi who unified China c. 221BC (imperial Qin Dynasty).
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The Terracotta Warriors discovery: Profitable to some involved but not to others! The government eventually expropriated the land from the farmers to give free rein to the excavations, effectively destroying the Yang village. The dispossessed villagers were inadequately compensated for the disruption to their lives. By the early 1990s, after years of meticulous and arduous preparation work, the site area was opened as a museum and rapidly became a modern wonder of the world and a tourist mecca. The permanent exhibition proved to be a great little supplementary ‘earner’ for local Communist Party officials and many enterprising business people also profited enormously from the financial opportunities. This propitious good fortune has not been shared by the statues’ discoverers or by the Yang community as a whole. In fact Yang’s fellow farmers blamed him for the loss of their plots and livelihoods, and he was ostracised by his neighbours. Other misfortune followed for the community, two of the farmer Yangs died, only in their fifties due to impoverished circumstance and another, Wang Puhzi, hanged himself. To the farmers who had feared that the feng shui of the location would be disturbed by digging up the area, these tragic outcomes confirmed in their minds that it had been cursed.
A Terracotta Army fan with good connexions Over in Washington DC, President Bill Clinton, when he wasn’t being leader of the “Free World”, had been following the unfolding archaeological story of the Xi’an terracotta army with growing interest and fascination. So, not long after, on a scheduled 1998 state visit to Beijing, Clinton requested that PRC allow him to make a side trip to Xi’an so he could see the terracotta marvels in situ for himself. The Chinese authorities, sensing a PR coup in the making, arranged for Mr Yang to be on hand at the site to meet the American president before the news cameras. For the occasion the (presumably) illiterate farmer was taught a few words of English to greet the president with. As it transpired, Yang got very nervous at the prospect of meeting the US leader and when introduced to Clinton on the day, instead of saying “How are you?”, what came out of Yang’s mouth in his halting English was “Who are you?” to which Clinton instantly responded, “I’m Hillary’s husband!” The flustered Mr Yang replied,”Me too!” Everybody laughed…on the Chinese officials’ part it was more of a nervous laugh!
⬅️ When Bill met Yang (but which Yang?)
Mr Yang, ‘professional’ book-signer The encounter between president and peasant farmer generated a second anecdote: at the meeting Clinton asked Mr Yang for his autograph. Yang, who could neither read nor write, simply drew three circles on a piece of paper. Followed a slightly uncomfortable moment … not least for the embarrassed Chinese officials in attendance. Consequently, the local authorities later sent the uneducated Yang for calligraphy lessons, after which Yang was given a job by the government in the Terracotta Warriors tourist shop. His task was to sit at a table all day signing books on the Terracotta Warriors (leading to his being called by some people, “China’s First Professional Signer”). It should be added that Yang Zhi’fa subsequently disputed the inference of this story circulated by a Chinese newspaper in 2002 that he was illiterate, contending that he in fact had a primary school education. Yang sued the newspaper and was eventually awarded damages [Yu Fei, ‘Living with the Terra-cotta Army’, (Consulate-General, Peoples Republic of China in Houston), www.houston.china-consulate.org].
Crafty Mr Yang If you venture into the Emperor Qin Museum shop in Xi’an, as I did three years ago, you will still see the same unsmiling Mr Yang, inscribing his signature on the inside of countless coffee table books, none of which are written by him! Although he looks distracted and bored in his sedentary confinement, he is in actual fact ever vigilant, on the lookout for maverick tourists trying to snap his precious photograph, something he is peculiarly adverse to. While he was looking the other way, and thinking I was out of the line of his peripheral vision, I tried to grab a surreptitious, sneaky photo of Yang from the side…just as I was about to, the sour-faced septuagenarian, suddenly and without looking towards me, raised a cardboard sign in my direction which said in large English letters, “NO PHOTOS OR VIDEOS ALLOWED!”. But is it the ‘real’ Clinton? ⤴
Other spots, other ‘Yangs’ If you wander further afield around the Terracotta Warriors complex you may chance upon other individuals also purporting to be “Mr Yang”. It’s quite an industry in Xi’an! In one building near the entrance to the complex there is Yang Xi’an who passes himself off the discoverer of the warriors (although his banner actually says “the discover of the warriors”), displaying a photo of himself posing with Clinton as proof of his credentials. It transpires that this Mr Yang was in fact the manager of a Xi’an factory making replicas of the warriors at the time of Clinton’s 1998 visit – this explains the photo taken when “Slick Willie” stopped off at the factory on route to the Terracotta Museum.
Would the real Mr Yang, the genuine “Discoverer of the Terracotta Warriors’, please stand up? In the glow of world attention being lavished on the terracotta army discoveries and the recognition bestowed on Mr Yang, it is not surprising that the other three surviving farmers present at the 1974 archaeological find wanted to get in on the act. Yang Quany was also given a spot in the museum signing books for a small stipend and began promoting himself as “the discoverer of the treasures”. The remaining two Yangs followed suit. Yang Zhi’fa however discredits his fellow Lintong farmers’ motives and insists that it is he who was primus intra pares (first among equals) in discovering the Emperor Qin relics.
And it doesn’t stop there by any measure. Zhao Kangmin, retired curator of the nearby Lintong Museum, has made his case for recognition as the real discoverer. The way Mr Zhao tells it, after the initial finding Yang Zhi’fa brought the fragment of the terracotta relic first to him at his museum and that he went back to investigate the discovery, and later he reconstructed the first terracotta warrior and horse. Zhao argues that he was the one who had the expertise to grasp the significance of the cultural relics, and that “seeing” as Yang and the others merely did, “doesn’t mean discovering”. You’ll find Zhao, despite being retired, most days at the Lintong Museum where he has set up a small display of the terracotta figures. Zhao spends the day signing postcards for tourists, on the cards he writes, very deliberately: “Zhao Kangmin, the first to discover, restore, appreciate, name and excavate terra-cotta warriors” [Ibid].
Whilst the Lintong farmers haven’t made much money from discovering (or being associated with the discovery of) the terracotta army, the same can be said of the workers who did most of the hard physical work of unearthing and restoring the statues. Most of those recruited to curator Yuan Zhongyi’s archaeological team found themselves working round the year with only a break at the time of the Spring Festival holiday for a wage of only 1.72 yuan (US $0.28) a day in 1976 [Zhao Xu, ‘Yang Zhifa, 76, soldiers on amid terracotta warriors’, (09-XII-2014),China Daily USA, www.chinadaily.com].
A Terracotta Warriors discoverer-impostor industry Back at the Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, as the fame and popularity of Emperor Qin’s Mausoleum grows, more impostors continue to spring up. These “fake discoverers” of the warriors were like Yang Xi’an, not even present at the discovery of the relics in 1974 (some are not even old enough to have been there!). A manager of one of the gift shops admitted that the complex shops hire men who fraudulently passed themselves off as discoverers of the relics to facilitate the sale of terracotta warrior books by the retailer [Simon Parry, ‘Curse of the Warriors’, South China Morning Post, 15 Sept 2007, www.scmp.com].
“The three in the middle just moved!” ⤴
PostScript: Discovery of yet more warriors made from fired clay Meanwhile back in the football field sized excavation pits at Lintong, Emperor Qin’s life-sized army of clay statues continues to grow. Archaeologists working in pit Nō 2 recently made a fresh discovery, one which might yield another 1,400 warriors, archers, horses and charioteers (and 89 chariots of war) [‘China’s Terracotta Army has new recruits’, Daily Mail, 6 May 2015, www.dailymail.co.uk]. Chinese officials have speculated that there may be around 6,000 terracotta warriors at the site still to be excavated … ensuring no doubt that there will be plenty of new and ongoing opportunities for discoverer-impostors in the future.
The Hydro Majestic Hotel stands on the upper slopes of the Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains, about 116 kilometres west of the Sydney CBD. Last December it re-opened for business six years after it’s resale and interim closure in 2008. The new owners, the Escarpment Group (a consortium of Sydney developers headed by Huong Nguyen and George Saad), have an ambitious vision for the Medlow Bath hotel, including an extension to its facilities and services, and a major renovation of the once great Blue Mountains landmark to restore some of its past glory. About four years passed before construction work even commenced on the site. Initially the new owners had to undertake a big clean-up job of the vacated property as a very large amount of assorted clutter was left behind by the previous occupants [‘Saving a grand old beauty’s soul’, Peter Munro, Traveller, 7 January 2013, www.traveller.com.au].
The Hydro Majestic through the agency of a renovation that cost $30 million has been transformed—from its erstwhile state of dishevelment and disrepair—to again rise seemingly phoenix-like in 2015. The new exterior makeover resulted in the complex’s buildings being painted uniformly white, clearly the developers are hoping that the anticipated returns will repay the investment (all up a reported $40.5 million including the purchase price) so that the venture doesn’t end up a ‘white elephant in all senses!’
Mark Foy’s Liverpool St store
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The Majestic’s current incarnation however is only the latest of many manifestations and reinventions that the hotel has undergone over its long, colourful history. The Hydro Majestic’s genesis lies in the overseas travel experiences of retail baron Mark Foy around the turn of the twentieth century. Foy was co-owner with his brother Francis of the large Sydney department store, Mark Foy’s (named after his father Mark Foy Sr) in Oxford Street, Sydney, later relocated to Liverpool Street in a famous piazza building. The young entrepreneur’s experience of health spas on the Continent gave him the idea for starting a hydropathic therapy operation in Australia. In 1902 Foy purchased several large blocks of land in the Blue Mountains to re-create a similar spa resort to the highly-popular sanatoriums he had visited in Europe. The site chosen at Medlow Bath was supposedly located on natural mineral springs that incorporated the earlier Belgravia Hotel [John Low, ‘Palace in a Wilderness: Hydro Majestic Medlow Bath’, www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au]. Foy’s Blue Mountains ur-health resort
Upon completion in 1904 Foy opened his Medlow Bath hydropathic sanatorium (the first health resort in NSW) which he named the Hydro-Majestic. By this time whatever springs were present (if they ever existed) had dried up. Consequently Foy imported large quantities of mineral water from Germany for use in his establishment [www.hydromajestic.com.au (Wikipedia entry)]. He also introduced a German-manufactured generator to supply the Hotel and the surrounding township with electricity (purportedly four days before the city of Sydney achieved electricity!) [www.hydromajestic.com.au, ibid.].
A series of spa pools connected by springs to the hotel generator were constructed in the nearby bush for the use of guests. Foy advertised that the Hydro would provide cures for nervous, alimentary, respiratory and circulatory ailments. Foy from the establishment’s start was also intent on trying to broaden the Hydro’s appeal, advertising it as “the most enjoyable place to spend one’s holidays” [Elaine Kaldy, ‘Medlow 1883 and Now’ (1983), cited in ‘Mb002 : Hydro Majestic’, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au]. To coordinate the therapeutic programs Foy brought out a Dr Bauer from Switzerland to introduce guests to his “diets of weird and wonderful treatments” [www.hydromajestic.com.au].
Playboy business tycoon
Mark Foy, to all accounts, was not particularly hands-on in his business pursuits, leaving it to a host of managers and agents. The Hydro for instance was apparently leased to influential hotelier and parliamentarian James Joynton Smith in 1913 [‘K032 : Carrington Hotel’, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au]. Foy’s conspicuous affluence and delegation of tasks to others allowed him the leisure to pursue outdoor activities. The business baron also had a reputation of being something of a playboy-about-town in the ‘Great Gatsby’ mould, legendary for throwing lavish parties for his friends at the Hydro and at his other homes at Bellevue Hill and Bayview.
Mark Foy Jr
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The Hydro Majestic owner was a keen sportsman, yachtsman and motor-car enthusiast. He was such a car enthusiast that he would periodically have sales of bulk numbers of his vehicles on site at his Bellevue Hill property [“MARK FOY’S MOTORS” (Advertisement), Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 1910 – an adroit coupling of business with pleasure on his part; cited in Pittwater Online News, Issue 102 (17-23 March 2013), http://www.pittwateronlinenews.com/mark-foy-history.php]. Foy used his fleet of cars to ferry guests on trips from Medlow Bath to nearby Jenolan Caves. He also kept horses on the grounds for guests to explore Megalong Valley by horseback [Office of Heritage and Environment (Hydro Majestic), www.environment.nsw.gov.au].
Majestic skyline
˚ Network of bush walks and sustainable agriculture
Foy had a series of bush walk tracks built on the cliffs below the Hydro Majestic. The walking tracks provided spa guests with a physical outlet that would complement Dr Bauer’s therapeutic programs. Guests were encouraged to exercise in the fresh mountain air as part of their recovery. These tracks with local physical features with names like Tucker’s Lookout, Sentinel Pass and the Colosseum offer breath-taking cliff views of the Megalong Valley, and are still explored by bush walkers today.As well as the hotel site itself Mark Foy purchased a considerable amount of land in the Megalong Valley to grow food for the Majestic hotel dinner tables. Foy built a large rural holding at Megalong which he called the Valley Farm, on it was a racecourse, stables, diary farm and a piggery. The farm grew corn, turnips and oats [‘Mark Foy – Retail Tycoon and Megalong Valley Farm’, www.megalongcc.com.au]. The produce grown in the valley was transported up to the resort by a flying fox Foy had rigged up.
The business tycoon also maintained personal properties on the Medlow Bath complex, including a cottage in the Valley known as the Sheleagh Cottage. This property with its great views of the valley, now called “Mark Foy House”, is today listed as a mountains getaway available for rental. It is unclear how much time the constantly on-the-go Foy spent at Sheleagh, or for that matter at any of his Sydney properties, as the newspapers of that day regularly reported him as embarking with his family on yet another world or European tour [cited in Pittwater Online News, op.cit.]. I can easily imagine Foy’s name cropping up constantly in the Vice-Regal column that used to appear in the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘The Lost World’
˚ ༘ ༘ ༘ Resort’s luminaries
At the height of its popularity, in the twenties, the Hydro-Majesty was THE fashionable venue to visit, “the place to be seen” by the denizens who grace Sydney’s social pages. Over the years it has had more than its fair share of VIP guests, such as Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose novel The Lost World was inspired by the vast wilderness environment that the Hydro was set in. Other guests include Indian rajahs, Australia’s first Olympic swimming gold medal winner Freddie Lane, and the Commonwealth’s inaugural Prime Minister Edmund Barton, who died whilst staying at the resort in 1920. Boxer Tommy Burns set up a training camp at the hotel where he prepared to fight Jack Johnson for the World Heavyweight Championship in the most famous bout in Australia boxing history at Sydney Stadium in 1908. The entertainment and amusements provided by Mr Foy at the Hydro Majestic took various forms. In its heyday when it was a luxury tourist resort, balls and concerts were regular events. Singers such as the soprano queens Dames Nellie Melba and Clara Butt were hired to perform at these concerts. A curious feature was the cross-dressing costume parties of well-to-do guests in which the husband and wife swapped clothing with each other for the event [‘Saving a grand old beauty’s soul’, op.cit.].
An architectural mixed bag
Taken at its broad scope the Hydro-Majestic is an impressive if a bit discordant sight, a long line of arranged buildings, albeit positioned in a somewhat higgledy-piggledy fashion stretching for some 1.1 kilometres across the Megalong escarpment. The Hotel’s architecture is hybrid in character, with buildings being added in an ad hoc fashion over time and in a novel mixture of styles: Victorian, Edwardian, Belle Époque and a blend of Art Deco and Art Nouveau interior design.
The Hydro – in its down-market days
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The Majestic’s most distinctive external feature is the Casino building with its imposing Chicago-manufactured dome (this ‘casino’ has been used as an entertainment hall or pavilion rather than as a gaming house). The changing fortunes of the Hydro Majestic as a whole over the decades was symbolised in the fate of the Casino itself: going from the scene for grand balls and concerts in the 1920s and 1930s to a repository for (how the mighty have fallen!) pinball machine entertainment in the 1980s!
A Zimmerman
˚ Resident artist with obsessive-compulsive tendencies
One of the most intriguing interior features of the Hydro Majestic is the so-called Cat’s Alley, a long corridor whose windows back in the day were draped with peacock feathers. Scone-and-cream afternoon tea visitors to the hotel would stroll down the corridor strewn with puff-pillowed lounge chairs and a set of bizarre panelled scenes, hunting scenes from different historical periods, the work of a Swiss artist called Arnold Zimmerman. Panel after panel comprised Prehistoric cavemen hunting wooly mammoths, Assyrian warriors slaughtering lions, British Raj mounted horsemen hunting tigers in India, Roman soldiers killing elephants, and so on and so on. The first time I ever visited the Hydro I marvelled somewhat bemused at Zimmerman’s paintings, finding them slightly disturbing in their obsession with the monumental struggle between man and beast, terrible but also engaging in a visceral way. Visitor access was blocked to the Alley for some years but it is pleasing to note that it is opened again after the refurbishment with additional seating.
The immediacy of a vast wilderness of National Park bushland has regularly posed a danger to the Hydro Majestic. In 1905 fire destroyed the Gallery building and in 1922 did the same to the original Belgravia wing. There have been several other close calls, the latest in 2002 when Medlow Bath’s “Gothic tourist pile”, as one article described it, narrowly avoided a spot fire blaze [Margaret Simons, ‘Majestic tourist icon survives ordeal by fire’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 December 2002].
The Hydro-Majestic over the course of its century-plus existence has undergone a number of transformations. What started off as a hydropathic spa pretty soon morphed into a luxury tourist retreat after 1909 (“Mr Foy’s Private Lodge”), only to revert more modestly to a family hotel for ordinary guests and day-trippers. In WWII the Hydro was converted into the 118th US General Hospital to care for convalescing American soldiers, some of which showed their “gratitude” by inflicting damage on the hotel’s decor during their stay. After the War the Hydro reverted to a hotel and guesthouse. By the 1980s the buildings had declined alarmingly despite receiving a heritage preservation order in 1984, business had dropped off and the very visible signs of wear and age eventually necessitated a revamping in the 1990s and again in the last few years.
In keeping with the hybrid nature of the hotel, parts of the new Hydro Majestic exude a distinctly oriental flavour. The Salon Du Thé features a Shanghai chic tea room and bar and both it and the Cat’s Alley reprise many of the oriental traits of the original 1900s Medlow hotel which featured a Chinoiserie style favoured by Mark Foy. The Majestic’s original Salon Du Thé displayed ornaments and furnishings which included large Chinese vases and porcelain vessels, bamboo-look furniture and silk umbrellas [www.hydromajestic.com.au].
Footnote: Regaining its past glory? Will the refurbished Hydro Majestic rise again to the exalted heights it attained in the inter-war period? Will patrons flock to it again as they once did? Will it be able to attract the higher socio-economic clientele associated with a luxury resort? It is far too early to tell, but it should be noted that there is a lot more choice now in Sydney with high-class hotels and resorts. Nonetheless, the Hydro’s traditional high tea is back, the complex has more restaurant options than ever before, though the guest rooms are still on the small side! What also hasn’t changed to its advantage are the magnificent panoramic views of the Megalong Valley, they remain one of the Hotel’s strongest magnetic attractions.
Above: Flagship of the Mark Foy’s retail empire. The city department store opened in 1885, moving to the Liverpool Street site in 1909 where an ice skating rink was installed on the 5th floor in 1950 for “Fashion Fantasy on Ice” parades. In 1980, having been earlier acquired by Waltons it ceased trading permanently. Today the monolithic heritage building renamed the Downing Centre functions as a state courthouse.
