Brett Whiteley's Last Motel — Thirroul, NSW

Brett Whiteley — Australia's most celebrated and controversial painter — was found dead in a rented unit in Thirroul, a coastal town south of Sydney in the Illawarra region, on 15 June 1992. He was 53 years old. The cause of death was a heroin overdose. Whiteley had driven alone from Sydney to Thirroul the previous day; his body was discovered by the motel proprietor the following morning. He had been struggling with heroin addiction for years, a battle that ran alongside one of the most prolific and visually extraordinary careers in Australian art history.

Whiteley's connection to music was profound and documented throughout his work. He painted portraits of Charlie Parker and other jazz musicians with an intimacy that suggested deep listening; he was obsessed with Van Morrison, whose music he played constantly in his studio; he painted Nude with Blue Chair (1976) and dozens of works in his Lavender Bay studio overlooking Sydney Harbour that carry the influence of both abstract expressionism and a specifically Australian sensibility shaped by the harbour light, the bush, and the particular quality of attention that living beside water produces. The Whiteley Studio at 2 Raper Street in Surry Hills — where he worked from 1985 until his death — is now managed by the Art Gallery of NSW as a heritage site.

Thirroul itself has a literary and artistic heritage: D.H. Lawrence lived there briefly in 1922 and wrote Kangaroo in the town. Whiteley's death in Thirroul connected two of the most significant artists to spend time in the town. The specific motel where he died is a private address. The Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills, Sydney, is open to the public on selected weekends and holds the largest collection of his work in Australia.