The polished parquetry floor, copper light fittings, verti-tiles and gilded mirrors are a fair contrast to its recent past, even its origins, but add yet another telling dimension to Geelong’s multi-storied and multi-storeyed Ritz.

That’s the ground-floor café, by the way, of what’s been the Belle Vue Hotel, the Bay View Temperance Hotel, a confectionery and fruit shop, The Ritz Holidays Flats, private guesthouse, a homeless squat and junkies shooting gallery down the years.

As the Oaks R Suites today, it’s a fair departure from all those but a three-metre high image it hosts of the old girl provides visitors a glimpse of what she once was.

And that’s colourful to say the least, lurid’s probably closer the truth.

She straddled the best of both worlds at the arse end of universe in wonderfully colonial bipolar fashion. One night, it might be dispensing to the carnal palates of sailors from Southampton to Valparaiso; the next, to the municipal designs of aldermen and traders anxious about shipping routes, stevedores …

The Belle Vue was on the main cattle track of town, a thriving thoroughfare in the 1850s Gold Rush as every manjack digger, dodger and deadbeat tried their luck pursuing subterranean, alluvial or criminal auriferous profits. Boozers, brawlers, prostitutes, proprietors, sinners and saints. A delightful cross-section of the community, you might say.

Dating to 1854-55, its first rate notice was shared by William Mills and John Carver. Mills ran the place initially. He and his wife held posts of Immigration Depot master and matron, although he came into disrepute in the mid-60s when linked to his wife’s death by ‘serious apoplexy’ after deserting her and leaving town, letting her fall into destitution.

The pub famously staged a conference in 1854 on the critical matter of a new wharf’s location to boost trade, leading to a petition on paper 136 feet long, 44 metres, with 6000 signatures urging government action.

Rumours persist of a role as a morgue, with autopsies conducted on the bar, but while purportedly common practice in early pubs this remains speculation.

Rumours for many years persisted also of an apparition that would have curled the hair of the prim Miss De Lahunty who exorcised the Belle Vue’s bold and bawdy past into a temperance hotel in 1895 with tea, coffee and buns instead of whiskey, beer and gut-rot.

The naked nymph of The Ritz was fast becoming legend – purportedly sighted peering through the blackened window frames of the Ritz’s burnt-out upper storey, scampering, dancing about the bomb-blasted floors, seemingly in mid-air, in dervish-like peregrinations, supernatural poses.

Eventually, she was captured on film, well someone was, some years back now, among the graffiti-riddled upstairs walls of the then-restricted building. Both photographer and nymph have been somewhat shy about detailing the experience but I’ve seen the photos. Bang goes another myth.

For many years, the Belle-Bay-Ritz was a forlorn case of crumbling social and architectural heritage, a demolition by neglect case that had city burghers talking of compulsory acquisition as owners fudged and filibustered with wine bar/karaoke/motel/restaurant development permits they couldn’t sell.

Fires, squatters jumping out windows, junkies and no-hopers kept the place busy, cops and smokies. Critics were banging on about heritage-listed building owners surrendering title to their land if a structure went up in a suspicious blaze.

Meanwhile, new high-rises were springing up about and the city’s waterside developing a new lease on life. Today, it’s nice to see the old Belle-Bay-Ritz’s husk neatly replicated, nothing else was left after all, in a handsome juxtaposition of old and new as a tip to the past and present alike.

Just a pity they haven’t found that photo of the nymph. Could always drop me a line ….

This story appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 1 December 2025