Last week, Welling­ton­ista’s ace lit­er­ary team was lucky enough to get invit­ed along to the pre-launch Writ­ers’ Week Wel­come, held with­in the Muse­um Art Hotel’s very swanky Bil­liards Room.

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Fol­low­ing on from last year’s sale of the Courte­nay-dis­trict land­mark (let’s not go bust­ing out the dread­ed “icon­ic” just yet) to Syd­ney-based EVT (Event, Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Enter­tain­ment Lim­it­ed), the hotel’s in the process of rebrand­ing. The QT Muse­um Welling­ton Hotel will join EVT’s line­up of six QT-brand­ed lux­u­ry hotels across Aus­tralia; though the art col­lec­tion that’s put the hotel on the map will con­tin­ue to adorn the inte­ri­or.

Every room in the Muse­um tells a sto­ry, the Bil­liards Room being no excep­tion. Like the Hoku­sai cast-offs that found their way to France as wrap­ping-paper and kick­start­ed 19th-cen­tu­ry Japon­isme, the room’s walls have been plas­tered with pack­ag­ing man­i­fests from oth­er acqui­si­tions. It’s like munch­ing canapes inside a warm, very roomy ship­ping con­tain­er — though per­haps a more invit­ing expe­ri­ence than that descrip­tion might imply.

So, there we were, shoul­der-rub­bing with some of the literati world’s finest. Not that we could tell. The prob­lem with lit­er­ary stars is that, unless you’re a spe­cif­ic fan of an author, you gen­er­al­ly have no idea who they are. Sue’s lit-crush Jasper Fforde was­n’t there, so ran­dom min­gling was the order of the day. And thus is was that our esteemed pub­lish­er James found him­self play­ing some 8‑ball with two of Israel’s lead­ing cul­tur­al lights: author Etgar Keret and his equal­ly acclaimed wife, film-mak­er Shi­ra Gef­fen.

(An aside: it does seem slight­ly incon­gru­ous that the Bil­liards Room tables are set up to play 8‑ball. Pre­sum­ably this is because (a) nobody real­ly knows the rules to bil­liards, and (b) the tables are prop­er, mas­sive bil­liard tables; it could take you weeks to fin­ish off a game of bil­liards or snook­er, so 8‑ball is a way of ensur­ing a game can actu­al­ly be com­plet­ed over the course of a one-hour event. If only just. Pre­sum­ably bil­liard or snook­er sets can be pulled out on request.) (Anoth­er aside: nice straight cues.)

_Museum-Art-Hotel_Billiards-Room_March-2016-(5)James and Etgar won over Etgar’s wife and son, James’s ridicu­lous­ly long arms giv­ing him some­thing of an advan­tage on the tables that — as men­tioned above and as Etgar would com­ment on lat­er — “you just about need­ed to hitch-hike around to get from one side to the oth­er”. Most sat­is­fy­ing of all was shoo­ing ex-may­or Ker­ry Pren­der­gast away from the side of the table as Etgar lined up the win­ning shot. 8‑ball eti­quette was­n’t high on the list of our erst­while lead­er’s pri­or­i­ty lists, it would seem.

A good time had, then. The canapes (pork bel­ly, aranci­ni balls and Laurent’s Loudeac sig­na­ture dish ‘Salmon sashi­mi my way’) were deli­cious. The wine flowed, as did some very con­vivial dis­cus­sions on writ­ing, read­ing and skate­board­ing. It was the sort of place where it would be very easy to spend a good part of the evening (and ear­ly morn­ing) dis­cussing the fin­er things in life, sur­round­ed as one is, by a good pro­por­tion of those things. But the whole thing wrapped up in the blink-of-an-eye as the vast major­i­ty of the atten­dees wan­dered down the road to the Miran­da July con­cert (review of that, poten­tialy forth­com­ing here as well).

The hotel man­age­men­t’s desire is for the rebrand­ed QT Muse­um to be seen as more than just a night-stay, as the venue’s stag­ing of this gath­er­ing sug­gests. Stuck down Kent Ter­race end with some emails to catch up on in between engage­ments? No fool­ing, the Muse­um would sim­ply love for you to pop in for a cof­fee and leech their wi-fi. They’re keen to be thought of as a down­town salon where trav­el­ers and locals alike feel free to bust out a lap­top and hang out, albeit in dis­tract­ing­ly well-curat­ed sur­rounds. If clear­ing your inbox while a larg­er-than-life por­trait of Ella Yelich-O’Con­nor peers over your shoul­der appeals, this might be the only place to do so.