The Woman Who Brought the Outback Into Brisbane's Newest Hotel

There was a burst water main in Chermside this morning. It cancelled the press event, sent the media pack home, and left General Manager Sue Rowe with exactly one journalist and a hotel full of stories to tell.

Lucky for us.

Adina Chermside opened officially today — 148 apartments, a light-filled lobby anchored by a dramatic onyx reception desk, an all-day café, meeting rooms, and walls lined with photographs of the Queensland outback. That last detail is the one that matters most.

The photography collection was curated from BUSH, a large-format coffee table book by Queensland photographer and filmmaker Sam Thies. His project journeyed through outback Queensland in 2020 — a year of unusual stillness — to document communities shaped by harsh country and long generations.

Photography by Sam Thies, from his coffee table book BUSH — Gum tree, Eulo (left) and Cattle grid at Shandonvale Station, Aramac (right)

The works hanging here include Cattle grid at Shandonvale Station, Aramac and Gum tree, Eulo. They are not decoration. They are testimony.

For Sue Rowe, they are something more personal than that.

Her grandfather and father grew up on Diamond Downs, a cattle station in outback Queensland. The photographs don't just remind her of a place. They remind her of a feeling — "the smell of dust after rain, the hum of cicadas, and the long roads home."

It's an unusual quality in a new hotel: genuine emotional continuity between the people who built it and the walls they've filled. Rowe describes the hotel's purpose with a quiet certainty that feels earned rather than rehearsed.

"Adina Chermside isn't just opening its doors," she says. "It's opening a space where travellers can breathe out, settle in, and feel held by something recognisably their own."

The building itself is the work of WMK Architecture, led by Practice Director David Percival. The design draws directly from the nearby Chermside Hills Reserve — stepped forms that pull natural light into corridors, a terracotta-toned façade that echoes the neighbourhood's brickwork character, and living greenery woven through the exterior that softens the whole composition into something subtropical and settled.

Developer Nick Barr of Limitless Developments has been building in Brisbane for over 25 years. This is the kind of project — genuinely place-specific, unhurried in its design thinking — that a developer with deep local roots tends to produce.

The hotel joins an Adina network of more than 40 properties across Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe. Chermside's version is the brand's most considered addition to Brisbane in years. And today, it opened quietly, without the fanfare — which, as it turns out, suited it perfectly.

Adina Chermside | 523 Hamilton Road, Chermside | adinahotels.com