In terms of Australian musicians, they don’t come much more iconic than Paul Kelly. Emerging from Adelaide via Melbourne in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Kelly would go on to become Australia’s greatest troubadour, his songs echoing across the country in the decades since, tracing heartbreak, highways, pubs, politics and ordinary lives with an almost uncanny clarity.

And a key chapter of that story belongs to the streets around Kings Cross and Potts Point.

Having formed Paul Kelly and the Dots in Melbourne in the early 1980s, Kelly found himself at a crossroads after the band dissolved amid a series of missteps and frustrations. At a low point personally and creatively, he borrowed his father-in-law’s old Holden and headed for Sydney to catch up with friend and fellow songwriter Don Walker of Cold Chisel fame.

Walker, then as now, was living in Potts Point and offered Kelly a place to stay. While Walker headed out into the day, Kelly would sit alone at the piano in the 2-storey terrace, writing songs. Much of the material from that period became the backbone of his landmark 1985 solo album Post, including its unforgettable opening track, ‘From St Kilda to Kings Cross’.

Though Kelly’s career would later encompass Australian standards such as ‘To Her Door’, ‘Leaps and Bounds’, ‘Bradman’ and ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’, ‘From St Kilda to Kings Cross’ remains one of his most enduring songs. Sparse and haunting, built largely around acoustic guitar and Kelly’s plaintive voice, it magnificently captures the loneliness and dislocation of arriving in Sydney after leaving behind his beloved Melbourne and St Kilda.

“Fair-weather friends are the hungriest friends,” Kelly sings, trading the glitter of Sydney Harbour for “that one sweet promenade”. More than 40 years later, the song still carries the ache of transition and reinvention, and for many listeners it remains one of the great songs written about Australian cities.

Now that connection between Melbourne and Kings Cross has been given a striking new visual form thanks to celebrated mural artist Scottie Marsh.

Seven years ago, Marsh painted a towering portrait of Kelly on the side of the Hotel Esplanade in Melbourne, emblazoned with the words “From St Kilda…”. The natural counterpoint always seemed to be a companion mural in Sydney, though it would take years for the idea to come to fruition.

Now, in early 2026, it finally has.

Towering above the streetscape on the side of the Potts Point Hotel, Marsh’s new work completes the sentence with the words “To Kings Cross”, alongside a huge and luminous portrait of Kelly. Already, it feels like something that has always belonged here, another layer in the endlessly evolving mythology of the Cross.

Known for his large-scale murals, sometimes provocative but always impossible to ignore, Marsh described the project on Instagram: “7 years ago I painted a portrait of Paul on the @hotelesplanadestkilda in St Kilda Melbourne, with the title ‘From St Kilda…’ taken from Paul’s 1985 song ‘From St Kilda to Kings Cross’. The intention was always to paint a second portrait in Sydney completing the song title, it took a while but we got there!”

There’s something fitting about the mural arriving now. When Post was first released in 1985, it was largely overlooked commercially, with little indication of the acclaim that would eventually follow. But slowly the album found its audience, becoming the foundation stone for what would emerge as one of the most significant careers in Australian music.

And so this new mural in many ways marks the very place where that career really began, a lonely young songwriter arriving in Sydney, sitting at a piano in a Potts Point apartment, and writing the songs that would become part of Australia’s cultural fabric.

Paul Kelly mural

https://pottspointhotel.com.au/

By Adam Gibson 

Photo by Adam Gibson