MOUNT MACEDON DEVONSHIRE LANE 015, KARORI MRCHLS slides 1992 8

Graeme Butler images from the 1992 surevy for the Macedon Ranges Cultural Heritage and Landscape Study published 1994;

VHR:

`Statement of Significance

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What is significant?

Karori is a six acre (2.4 hectare) hill station property on Turitable Creek on the steep southern slopes of Mount

Macedon, with a picturesque timber house set amidst an extensive garden. The house was built as a summer

retreat in 1888 by Charles William Chapman (1844-1929), a mining and pastoral investor who was originally from

New Zealand but who had extensive business interests in Australia. He brought from New Zealand the Italianborn

architect Louis Boldini (c1828-1908), who migrated to New Zealand and practised during the 1880s in

Dunedin, where he designed a number of major buildings. Boldini designed Chapman's new house, which was

given a Maori name, and in 1889 also designed in a similar picturesque style the nearby guest house, Braemar

House (VHR H2003), in which Chapman had a financial interest. Karori was advertised for sale in 1898 as 'the

well-known Italian villa' in 'one of the prettiest gullies in Victoria', with the grounds 'laid out into lawns,

shrubberies, flower, fruit and vegetable gardens'. The property was bought by the Melbourne wool buyer

Toussaint Dewez, who made some minor additions to the house in c1904, and it remained in the family until

1962. The Dewez family developed the garden with the assistance of three full-time gardeners and added a

number of North American trees. The property was acquired in 1972 by Dr Robert Harbison and his wife Thelma,

both prominent Mount Macedon identities, who extended the service wing and made other alterations to the

house, and introduced many exotics trees, mostly from New Zealand. The 1983 bushfires, which destroyed

many of the old Mount Macedon properties, damaged parts of the garden and destroyed the stables, a laundry, a

glass house and a gardener's cottage.

Karori is a timber building in a picturesque Swiss cottage style, which was considered an appropriate choice for

British colonial hill station residences in the nineteenth century. It has a square tower above the main entrance,

which is at the first floor level. The house is notable for the intricate carved timber decoration, especially in the

gable ends and at the base of the tower. It has an unusual H-shape plan, with a two-storey front section,

containing bedrooms on the ground floor and living rooms and bedrooms on the first floor, connected by a

passage at the first floor level to a single storey service wing at the rear. The timber theme is continued into the

interior, with Kauri pine lining the main rooms and Baltic pine the other rooms. The interiors are largely intact,

with original timber fireplaces and built-in cupboards, and the original scullery and bathroom, which is lined with

narrow-gauge corrugated iron. The garden is terraced with stone walls, and has many rare and exotic trees,

including weeping elms, a huge monkey puzzle, cryptomeria, silver birch, Tasmanian waratahs and sycamores.

In one part of the garden there is a younger stand of Douglas Fir, large rhododendrons, Lawson Cypress, tulip

trees and purple copper beeches. These massive trees are backed by towering eucalypts, while in the flower

beds there are masses of spring flowering bulbs, hellebores and lily of the valley. In one area a huge Giant

Redwood towers over the smaller trees and there is a cluster of silver poplars, variegated hollies, New Zealand

hop bush, an Algerian oak and a sugar maple. Along the drive are flowering currants, Irish strawberry, a huge

New Zealand griselinia, and there is a bank of native bush in the gully. There are outstanding specimens of a

Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and a Tasmanian leatherwood (Eucryphia lucida)'

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