"Masterpiece of Victorian architecture": Early settler homestead in Drouin hits the market for $3.8 million

By the time the rather grand homestead at 210 Stock Street in Drouin West was built in the 1890s, Gippsland was slowly emerging from the shadows of Melbourne and the goldfields north and west of the city.

In the wake of the Californian gold rush, which peaked in 1849, the 1850s saw prospectors from around Australia and the world descend on the Victorian goldfields - Ballarat, Bendigo and many points between - all in search of a life changing payday.

The gold rush lasted about a decade and altered the face of Australia, but east of Melbourne, places such as Drouin in Gippsland were struggling to become Colonial outposts of significance, despite gold being discovered in 1862 at Walhalla, about 90km away.

This was due in large part to the unforgiving, densely forested territory - home for tens of thousands of years to the Kulin and the Kurnai Nations - that had to be traversed and cleared to make way for pasturelands.

According to a 2020 Heritage assessment for another Drouin property, from 1860 the Victorian government, “motivated by the ideal of populating Victoria with independent farmers, and by the demands to 'unlock the land' from miners leaving the central Victorian goldfields”, passed legislation aimed at breaking up the squatting runs into small farming allotments.

A railway line came through in 1878 and a township was surveyed on the line at Drouin Junction, which later became simply Drouin. As with many towns around the state, the etymology - whether Indigenous or European - is open to debate.

“Land in the districts surrounding Drouin and Warragul was surveyed from the 1870s onwards,” the Heritage assessment stated.

But even then, it remained “Victoria's most inaccessible region”, according to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, “cut off to the north and west by mountains and dense rainforests”.

“Even after the railway reached the region in the 1880s, much of it remained relatively isolated until the early twentieth century,” the academy said. 

The property at 210 Stock Rd in Drouin West, which sits on a five-hectare block, has been placed on the market, with a price guide of $3.8 to $4 million.

According to domain.com.au the property has been listed for sale three times since 2022. Each time it was withdrawn from sale.

It last sold in 1991 for $145,000.

The selling agents describe the house as “a masterpiece of Victorian architecture, adorned with exquisite period details such as ornate ceilings, picture rails, lead lighting, hardwood Jarrah floors, decorative fireplaces, and magnificent Victorian windows”.

The main house has five bedrooms, with another three in the caretaker’s cottage.

Cover image from Ray White.