Location:
Section 4
Belgrave to Olinda
38.6km

The now abandoned mansion of Burnham Beeches is one of the iconic buildings of the Dandenongs. The once graceful mansion has been vacant and decaying for decades but is now set to be restored to its former glory.

Alfred Nicholas, the Aspro-brand sales magnate, commissioned architect Harry Norris to design his home in the hills. The brief was that it was to have “fresh air, sunshine and an outlook of command, yet under control”. Nicholas visited the Chelsea Flower Show in 1929, obtained many plants and engaged a Cornishman, Percival Trevaskis, to do the landscaping for the gardens. 

Norris’s design was for a three-storey mansion in the Art Deco Streamline Moderne style. The house was completed in 1933. The lines are said to be reminiscent of an ocean liner. The zig-zag motif was used as decoration on the decorative wrought-iron work and the balcony balustrades. The exterior of the house was of reinforced concrete, painted white and decorated with Australian motifs of koalas and possums in moulded relief panels.

Nicholas died in 1937 and was survived by his widow, Isabel and two children.

In 1941, during World War II, the house was loaned as a children’s hospital. After the war from 1948-50 it was redecorated by Nicholas’s widow. Mrs Nicholas moved from the house to Toorak in Melbourne in 1954. Two additional wings called the Garden and Forest wings were constructed during the 1950s and 1960s.

From 1955, the Nicholas Institute used the house as a research facility. The gardens, having been named the ‘Alfred Nicholas Memorial Gardens’, were donated to the Shire of Sherbrooke in 1965 and were transferred to the Forest Commission of Victoria in 1973. In 1981 the house was sold and operated as a small hotel for about a decade.

A group of investors commenced works on the site in 2005 but ceased those works in 2008 and the building remained empty and unused until 2019.

The property was purchased in 2010 by investor Adam Garrisson (Oriental Pacific Group) and chef and restaurateur Shannon Bennett. The pair are in the process of transforming the property and have already opened a bakery and cafe using some of the included land for raising animals and growing food to supply the businesses. 

The redevelopment of the main building into a luxury hotel was due to start mid-2019.