Looking Back history feature: The Bulli Royal Theatre

The Royal Theatre, Bulli 1930

ON the corner of Hopetoun Street and the Princes Highway, where Bulli meets Woonona, is a large building that currently trades as a gymnasium exclusively for women. The building originally opened as the Royal Theatre in 1924.

The silent film, lilies of the film, was screened to a selected audience when the theatre opened in 1924. However, the first public screening in the Royal was the Buster Keating silent film, Our Hospitality (1923).

The Illawarra Mercury reported on Friday September 12 1924:

 A MAGNIFICENT THEATRE

IN BULLI-WOONONA.

The hub of Bulli-Woonona on Tuesday night was undoubtedly the intersection of Hopotoun St. with Main Sth. Coast Road, on which now stands the majestic building just completed by Wollongong Theatres, Ltd., and which on Tuesday night was opened for the first time in all its grandour and brilliant illumination. It was really a ‘trial run’ and private inspection by representatives…