TasWeekend: Hobart's storytelling hotel MACq01 is full of character

AUSTRALIA’S first storytelling hotel is a love letter to Tasmania and its rich history.

I AM taken aback when I reach the door of my suite at MACq 01 hotel on the Hobart waterfront. I’d had visions of drifting to sleep musing on the legend of someone like Frenchwoman Marie-Louise Girardin, a cross-dressing ship’s steward who arrived aboard La Recherche in 1792 and is believed to have been the first European woman to set foot on Van Diemen’s Land.

But of all the 114 characters whose likenesses adorn guestroom doors at Australia’s first storytelling hotel, I find myself standing before an image of three guard dogs thrusting and snarling on chains. So much for romance! Turns out the dogs are from the “Eaglehawk Escapades”, a tale about the near-impossibility of Port Arthur convicts escaping past a line of dogs across the isthmus on the Tasman Peninsula. Living locally, I know this history, but many other tales swirling about the hotel are new to me.

The new MACq01 hotel on Macquarie Wharf in Hobart. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE

Opening on June 1, MACq 01 is the place to stay in Hobart this winter — or, for locals, at least to pop into for a drink at the Story Bar, which is adorned with Perspex front pages of the Mercury from over the years. The $46 million hotel, which is named after Macquarie Wharf One on which it was built, forms part of a bigger project under development by the Vos Group.

It is the latest offering from the Federal Group, best known locally as the monopoly owner of Tasmania’s pokies and Wrest Point casino, and beyond for luxury lodge Saffire Freycinet and the Henry Jones Art Hotel near MACq 01. A major resort is due to open at Port Arthur in late 2019 and there are longer-term plans for a smaller resort at Cradle Mountain.

A MACq 01 premium suite. Picture: FEDERAL GROUP

A lounge area at MACq 01 hotel. Picture: ALICE HANSEN

With storytelling as a centrepiece, MACq 01 dispenses with the aloofness and stiff uniformity of luxury hotels. Site specificity, as in Federal’s other tourism projects, is central. “Without the history of the Henry Jones building or the exclusive amazing nature of Saffire, we needed to find another way to connect guests deeply and meaningfully to place,” tourism general manager Matt Casey says. Capitalising on Hobart as “an analog place in a digital world” was deemed the key. It didn’t hurt that the site provided a rich historical vein, stretching thousands of years back beyond colourful convict and whaling days to the Mouheneenner people.

The storytelling concept emerged after market research for Tourism Tasmania’s Go Behind the Scenery campaign showed what many visitors most valued on their Tassie holiday was a “real” cultural experience. Meeting characters was a key activator. “Very few people in Hobart are fake,” Casey says. “Even the arseholes are authentic.”

MAKE A NOTE BOOKINGS: macq01.com.au. Prices start at $305 a night for Hunter Rooms, with Luxury Waterfront Suites costing $1200 a night. There are several options in-between. HOT TIP: Four professional storytellers are employed to entertain guests, and can be booked for oral history tours around the waterfront, including nearby Salamanca with its iconic sandstone warehouses. DROP IN: The Old Wharf Restaurant, Story Bar and Lounge are all open daily to the public, as well as to hotel guests.

That’s all fine and well, but what’s it like to stay at MACq 01? I push past the savage dogs and enter my premium waterfront suite, a huge level-two haven with a big deck. Pretending to be visiting from afar, I am blown away by views of the city, kunanyi/Mt Wellington, the waterfront with its yachts, fishing boats and Aurora Australis ice-breaker, and the River Derwent sweeping downstream. The suite is all about big, confident gestures. There’s a long leather lounge and, above the bed, an epic reproduction of a landscape by Troy Ruffels.

Antiques dealer Warwick Oakman sourced many artefacts displayed downstairs in the Old Wharf Restaurant and Story Bar. There are axes, a Napoleonic sabre, whaling hooks, an engraved whale tooth, a 19th-century stock whip handle and tiny decorative metal silhouettes. The Lounge is given over to Indigenous artefacts and replicas including kangaroo skins, a model canoe, conch shells, kelp baskets and digging sticks. Wherever I wander, staff are friendly. It all feels warm and welcoming.

The verdict? In a travel world in which Airbnb has heightened the possibilities for — and expectations of — connection with locals and delivery of a deeper, richer experience, MACq 01 is on the money in the hotel space.

The author was a guest of MACq 01.