Even when on his deathbed blind and deaf, Harry Corones knew when someone had rung up a ‘no sale’ on the till downstairs.
Aviator Amy Johnson touched down at Charleville in Western Queensland on her record breaking flight to London. She asked HC for a champagne bath to celebrate her arrival thus far. Twenty three magnums of the finest champagne went into her bath that night and later while she was downstairs being wooed by the townsfolk of Charleville, the staff rebottled the champagne. Harry got on the phone and sold the lot as “the champagne Amy Johnson had bathed in and it’ll be worth a fortune if she makes it to London.” Surprisingly there were now twenty four magnums, did she add a little warm artesian water to her bath?”
Although the hotel has long since left the family and has had its ups and downs and floods it is remarkably intact and is still a gracious old dame complete with marble floor tiles and silky oak dados. One flood peaked higher than the foyer mantelpiece.