The Mount Buffalo Chalet — affectionately known as the "grand old dame" — is getting a new lease on life, the ABC reports. Belgravia Outdoor Education and Parks Victoria are reopening the heritage-listed weatherboard building after a 20-year hiatus — and once Victoria's premier destination, it is hoped the chalet will become a world one.
The revival comes in stages: a cafe opens this month, 10 apartments next month, regional workers' accommodation early next year, and a renovated south wing with 200 beds for school camps. The Belgravia Group holds a 40-year lease on the site, and the works so far have included upgrades to electricity, solar and wastewater. When the chalet isn't hosting camps, it will be open during school holidays and weekends to anyone chasing the nostalgia.
Belgravia Outdoor Education chief executive Richard Thornton said there was nothing like the building anywhere in the world. "As you walk around, it's a maze of a place developed over years and years — what you see is an adventure as you turn each corner," he said. "Three storeys, 200 rooms, 108 bedrooms, most with an ensuite and none are the same size, every room is different and all wood-panelled."
5,000 students a year on the mountain
Some 5,000 students a year will soon attend camp on the mountain, staying in the chalet and exploring the Alpine National Park around it. "This is a great outdoor environment — where students can go caving, abseiling, kayaking, mountain biking — you could walk for three days and not see another person — it's an extraordinary environment," Mr Thornton said. Belgravia says it will work with Parks Victoria, Indigenous educators and people who have been connected with the chalet for decades.
'Every room we went into, they had a story'
Parks Victoria's Chris Derrick has his own lifetime of memories of the isolated old-world building. "I remember coming up here as a very young child in the 70s and having my experience with the chalet," he said. "And taking my then-girlfriend, who is now my wife, here in the 90s." Six months ago, as the team worked to reopen what is one of Australia's largest weatherboard buildings, he noticed an elderly couple peering through a window — they had worked at the chalet in the 60s, when the husband was site manager, and met and started their married life there. He brought them in for a tour. "Every room we went into, they had a story to share," Mr Derrick said. "They were in tears as they were walking through and seeing that the place was being maintained and retained its heritage value."
The history runs deep. The dining room still holds the oblong "Queen's table", used on a royal train when Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip toured Australia in 1954. The chalet itself, Mr Derrick said, was the product of "an incredible vision" by Victorian premier Sir Thomas Bent in the early 1900s — originally planned in stone, built in timber when stone proved too dear, with all the wood milled on the mountain and Lake Catani created as part of the milling. "The construction happened very quickly, so the wood was very green, which means some of the walls, floors and panelling have warped over time, and it's all part of the story that has become the chalet," he said.
Surviving the mountain
The building has been threatened by major bushfires, most notably in 1939 and 2006 — and it was after the 2006 fire, which destroyed nearby infrastructure including the Cresta Valley Ski Lodge, that the chalet closed. "Maintaining the building of wood in an Alpine area that's incredibly wet in winter and prone to bushfires in summer is a hell of a challenge," Mr Derrick said, crediting preparation and expertise from locals through to government agencies for keeping it safe in its remote nest of snow gums. It has been a month of chalet stories in Victoria — Melbourne's Wattle Park Chalet burned on a wedding morning less than a week ago; the mountain's is coming back to life.
The ABC's photographs show guest rooms still carrying the marks of another era, untouched through two decades of quiet. From this month, the doors open again — and the rooms can start collecting new stories.
