CHALET CAFÉ NOW OPEN
Historic Mount Buffalo Chalet opens to the public
It’s official! The café doors have swung open at the Mount Buffalo Chalet, inviting the public back inside the heritage building for the first time in almost 20 years.
The café, now run by Belgravia Group’s BOE, opened on Saturday 24 October, to an excited crowd that lined up out the door for a chance to take part in the historic moment.
“The renovations are terrific,” said David Jacobson, who, now 79, has been visiting the chalet since he was four years old.
The chalet’s main façade and lower level date back to 1910 and are protected by strict heritage conditions. Jacobson said the renovations had reinvigorated the traditional look and feel of the café, including a return to its original floorboards.
“For many years it was a black and white checkerboard tile, and it really didn't suit the place,” he said.
Richard Thornton, chief executive officer of BOE, said they took great care in returning the café to its original form.
“The architect took paint samples and went back through the scrapings on the wall to see what the original colour was rather than the colour that was on the surface. So when you look at the walls, it's the original colour,” he said.
BOE signed a 40-year lease with Parks Victoria in 2024 to manage the chalet as an outdoor education centre for school groups, with a condition to open the café to the public.
“The next stage, which is underway now, is putting accommodation back into the chalet,” said Thornton.
He said school groups will use the accommodation during the week, and the public will be able to stay at weekends. The refurbishment of the accommodation inside the original part of the chalet is expected to be completed in the second half of 2027.
Thornton, who was born in the United Kingdom, said he had come to realise just how important the Mount Buffalo Chalet was to so many people over the course of this project.
“If you stand outside that building for five minutes, somebody will come and tell you a story about their personal attachment to the building. Whether they got married there or their grandmother worked there, or they just came for a cup of coffee in 1967,” he said. “Everybody's got a story and it sticks with them.”
Jacobson, a retired pilot, has plenty of stories, spending weeks at a time at the chalet each year, getting to know its characters and its history.
“At 20, I reckon I'd learned most of what I needed to know about life, other than aviation, at the chalet,” he said.
From social dinners around the long dining room tables, bushwalks, horse riding, nights with the guitar by Bents Lookout, his first kiss on the bridge over Crystal Brook Falls, many of Jacobson’s most treasured life memories are entwined with the chalet. But it’s the wilderness that he loves most about Mount Buffalo, its prominence in the landscape and its giant granite boulders. As a commercial pilot, he would watch it from the sky most days, and when he retired, he moved just about as close as you could get, settling down in an acreage at its foothills.
SAVING THE CHALET
It has been a long journey to see it reopen, said Jacobson, who played an integral part in saving the chalet.
“If anyone had said to me back in February of 2007 that it would take the best part of 20 years to get it reopened, I wouldn't have believed them,” he said.
When the chalet closed, Jacobson joined the Community Reference Group on its future. In 2015, plans to refurbish the building fell through after quotes exceeded the available budget by $3-million. Jacobson, realising something needed to be done to prevent the dilapidation of the timber structure, formed the group Community Action for the Chalet, and with the help of local businesswoman Janelle Marsden and a group of dedicated volunteers, convinced the then State Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water, Lisa Neville, to scrap plans to demolish the annexes to the building, and to secure funding to complete the vital restoration works.
As a result, the Mount Buffalo Destination Advisory Group was formed, and in 2015, the State Government invested $2.8-million to paint and repair the building’s façade, while in 2020, the Commonwealth provided $3-million to repair roofing, windows, weatherboards and footings.
The Victorian Government allocated a further $1.8-million to conserve the café and establish the outdoor education centre.
For Jacobson, the opening of the café is a relief, and he believes it will be well used by outdoor education groups and weekend hikers. His calling complete, he is ready to close that chapter and move on.
“It's never going to be the same again, but part of it will be,” he said. “People won't have the same experiences that I did as a kid, but they'll have different experiences, and that will be their special times.”
OPENING HOURS
The Mount Buffalo Chalet Café is open weekends and public holidays between 10am and 4pm. The café is also available for weddings, functions and private events.
To keep up to date with announcements on accommodation, please join BOE’s Mount Buffalo Chalet mailing list.