Park Orchards Chalet survives redevelopment plans
January 12th, 2010
It seems that the historic 1928 Spanish Mission revival architecture of the Park Orchards Chalet will live to see another day after Manningham City Council rejected a redevelopment plan to demolish most of it and replace it with a nursing home.
The large former home, located in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs was used by the Australian army as a communications centre during World War II and since 1952 it has operated as a popular local function centre holding considerable sentimental value to many. The local community has apparently raising the 1.5 million needed to save the building and turn it into a community centre.
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From my blog:
SRD School of Eastern Interpreters site dodges the bullet…
The old Chalet in Park Orchards near Ringwood in Victoria has been the centre of a row between local community groups and developers.
The Chalet, built in 1928 was used by the Australian military during WWII, including 12 months as the location for SRD’s Underground Methods training school, under the cover name of “School of Eastern Interpreters”. Here, SRD trainees learned the “black arts” of intelligence and special operations – resistance to interrogation, recruiting agents, covert communications, setting up of clandestine organisations in enemy territory, surveillance, covert methods of entry (burglary), etc.
After the war the site was used variously as a club and restaurant. The last restaurant closed down around two years ago and the site is now sitting idle, the once perfectly manicured lawns overgrown.
I came across the Chalet whilst I was researching the location of the School of Eastern Interpreters and noticed with alarm that developers had been intending to demolish part of the building and gut the inside so they could turn it into an aged-care facility. They put in a development application to the local council who vetoed it, not because of the site’s heritage, but for mundane reasons like the fact the site is not sewered, having a septic system instead.
It turns out there has been no proper heritage survey ever done on the site. No-one knew about the site’s secret history as Australia’s “Spy School”, so I set about educating them. Now local community groups know, the council knows, and soon readers of the local newspaper will know.
After the whole Z Experimental Station debacle in 1995 where the 100 year-old “House on the Hill”, where Operation JAYWICK was planned and trained for, was actually BURNED down to allow development to proceed, I’m not going to let that happen to the Park Orchards Chalet.
Stay tuned.
For more info on the various sneaky goings-on at the Chalet during WWII, see my page on the School of Eastern Interpreters here: http://specialoperationsaustralia.com/soa/training-and-base-locations/166-sei.html
Cheers,
Craig