• Michele Cleaver-Wilkinson and, right, the new ballet school takes shape.

“THE first 100 years in this building were dominated by men, and the second hundred will be dominated by women!” laughs Michele Cleaver-Wilkinson.

Cleaver-Wilkinson is nearly finished transforming the old Newmarket Hotel in Hamilton Hill—once a buzzing rabble of horse trainers, wharfies and foundry workers—into a genteel ballet school.

The dance teacher has spent the past year painstakingly refurbishing the 1912 hotel, restoring old leadlight windows, removing giant bee hives and installing electrics and plumbing.

“It lay empty for a number of years and we found that people had come in and helped themselves to mantlepieces, stair posts and various other items,” she says.

• The original Newmarket Hotel.

“A developer got halfway transforming the place and so we had to take down walls he had put up and discovered a beautiful leadlight window.

“The place is starting to look really nice now and I think it will be a great addition to Hamilton Hill.”

Cleaver-Wilkinson previously ran a dance academy in Karratha, teaching 300 students a year in ballet, character, jazz, tap, hip hop and contemporary

She plans to open the Swan River Ballet school in time for the start of the first school term next year.

The Newmarket Hotel was once the social and community hub of west Hamilton Hill, where goods and services were swapped and bartered and punters could exchange items like, meat, eggs, crayfish and vegetables.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK