In the Avon Valley wheatbelt town of Northam, about 100 kilometres east of Perth, this hotel traces its origins to an 1861 wattle-and-daub store that became a licensed hotel in 1866 under George Throssell, later a premier of Western Australia. A recent restoration reopened it as a small heritage hotel, its rooms keeping period proportions and detailing alongside contemporary bathrooms and furnishings. The ground floor holds a cafe and a bar named for the temperance movement that once agitated against establishments like it. The town sits on the Avon River amid grain country, a staging point for the wildflower regions further east. The approach is restrained and lived-in rather than polished, treating the building's long history as the reason to stay rather than a backdrop.