9 April 2021

The Cafe Australia really was quite extraordinary, equal to Walter & Marion Griffin’s other great interior, the Capitol Theatre.

Created in 1916, it was a complete rebuild of the Vienna Cafe, renamed as too German in World War I, when Greek Australian owner Antony Lucas revamped it with a national name and features, like murals of gumtrees, and sculpted tea trees and fig trees (and three Greek muses by Margaret Baskerville) amongst the characteristic Griffin geometric patterns and lots of gold tiles.

There were three rooms, culminating in the great skylight vaulted main dining room. It’s sometimes said this room was saved and incorporated in the 1939 Australia Hotel, but no that was a new stylised version, and a floor higher up.

Last image is a table now in @ngvmelbourne collection. Info from the very thick ‘the griffins in Australia and India’, 1998, photos @nationallibraryaus, arranged – main room, ‘fountain room’, then ‘fern room’ (the fountain was actually between them). The last revamp of the arcade in 2019 finally deleted the use of ‘Australia’ from the site.

There’s many photos, not quite sure what they all are, and this shows that clearly the tree sculptures in the Fountain Court came later – or at least after the photo.

The next photo is clearly the Fern Court, with its single column, but I don’t know which room the second one is, also the Fern Court ? But with cane furniture not the Griffin furniture, and no column, different ceiling too. The cafe was revamped to be ‘more homely’ in 1931, maybe it’s after that.

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