PRIVATE HAIR STUDIO
THE GEORGE, ST KILDA.

It began in 1857 as the Terminus Hotel, built for the well-heeled visitors arriving at the end of Melbourne’s first suburban railway. Rebuilt and expanded in the boom years, it became an enormous Italianate seaside hotel; its grand dining room—later the Ballroom—hosted fashionable weddings, dinners and dances beneath chandeliers and an ornate Victorian ceiling.

Then St Kilda changed, and The George changed with it. Post-war glamour slipped into cabaret, strip-tease, drinking, dancing and the red-light world of Fitzroy Street. The basement earned names like the Snakepit and the Flying Jug. Respectability gave way to something rougher, stranger and far more interesting.

From 1978, the old ballroom became the Wintergarden, Crystal Ballroom and Seaview Ballroom—the epicentre of Melbourne’s punk, post-punk and new-wave underground. The Birthday Party, Nick Cave, INXS, The Cure, Hunters & Collectors, Dead Can Dance, Models, Midnight Oil and The Saints all moved through these rooms. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the building’s public bar became a packed nightclub with queues down Fitzroy Street.

Today the chandeliers, faded grandeur and creative energy remain. The George has been restored without being sanitised: design and objects at Primary Residence; French food and wine at Bistro Volière; beers and late nights at Freddie Wimpoles; live music in George Lane; celebrations in The George Lounge; and the great Ballroom upstairs. James’s studio is the newest creative room in a building that has never stayed one thing for long.