1929 - 1984

The Bondi beachfront building with the big ‘A’ on top has been a landmark on Campbell Parade for nearly 100 years.

The Astra Hotel – built on the site of the former Cliff Hotel – has had a wild history. First called the Hotel International, it was built about 1926 in the Commercial Palazzo style by Jack Shaw. Advertisements declared it ‘a veritable palace of luxury and delight’, its ‘sumptuously fitted dining room with beautiful, panelled design and rich pile carpets seated 200 guests’ and ‘each of the 100 bedrooms had its own hot and cold water service’ and a telephone.

The hotel, with its palm court orchestra, roof garden and ‘magnificent ballroom’ accommodating ‘400 couples without any crowding’ offered ‘class’ and attracted country and Sydney people. The Great Depression hit the Hotel International hard and Shaw’s vision for a grand European-style hotel was on-sold to the hotelier, newspaper owner, Sydney councillor and sporting personality Sir James Joynton Smith, who renamed it the Astra. In 1937 Allen Oldfield and his three sons took control of the Astra, with Joynton Smith concentrating on his hotels in the Blue Mountains. Through the 40s and 50s the old-world charm of its elegant dining room and excellent food made it popular for business entertainment. A casino bar opened on the first floor and its eight-tap bar was one of the biggest in Sydney. The actor Peter Finch is said to have been a waiter there.

During World War II, the Astra was taken over by the Royal Australian Air Force and later by the Britain’s Women’s Royal Naval Service. In 1959, scenes for the British-Australian film Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, starring Ernest Borgnine, John Mills and Angela Lansbury, were filmed in the Astra bar, with the actors enjoying the beach panorama.

The Oldfields sold the Astra in 1967 to Intercapital Hotels, which resold it to Cyril Maloney in 1973. Through the 70s and 80s the hotel became known for drugs, violence and rowdy behavior. The local community petitioned Waverley Council to close it and in 1982 Council approved the hotel’s conversion to a 50-unit retirement village, which remains today.

Courtesy Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.