PLANS to transform an historic property once home to the rich and famous into a place you could stay overnight are before Pyrenees Shire Council.
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Mooramong Homestead, in Carranballac near Skipton, is the former home to Hollywood silent film actress Claire Adams and her high society husband Scobie Mackinnon and is one step closer to welcoming back visitors with tourist accommodation on what has remained a working sheep farm.
The National Trust has put forward an application to renovate three outer cottages - Routabout's Cottage, Overseer's Cottage and Stockman's Cottage - on the south-eastern side of the homestead, and overhaul the dilapidated Single Men's Quarters into two apartments with a shared common space.
The Trust is also seeking to add three tiny houses in the homestead complex without impacting on views not to be seen from the homestead.
These changes received a $2 million state government grant to restore the historic 3800-hectare property and boost tourism last year.
Permission has also been sought in the application for Mooramong to operate as a museum and limited function centre with a maximum of one event per month for up to 100 people.
Mooramong is part of a 15,000-hectare squatting run taken up by Scotsman Alexander Anderson and two partners in 1838, according to the National Trust statement of significance cited as part of the planning application. Mr Anderson had sold off all but about one third, which he called Mooramong, by 1871 and he commissioned the original house before selling the property in 1889.
Mooramong was in the hands of lawyer and racing identity Lauchlan Kenneth Scobie Mackinnon who gifted the property to his son Scobie for a 21st birthday present. Donald "Scobie" Mackinnon became a successful sheep farmer and met Canadian-born actress Claire Adams when in England for the coronation of King George VI in 1937.
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The town planning report detailed Mooramong Homestead as a place that "recaptures the life and times of the 1930s to the 1960s and its former famous inhabitants with the house featuring period furniture, photographs, film archives, curios and objects d'art".
The homestead and garden complex fronts Black's Creek and features a tennis court, home paddocks, horse paddock, cottages, single men's quarters, sheds, shearing shed and shearer's quarters.
Part of the wider reserve features a partnership with Zoos Victoria to foster endangered Eastern Barred Bandicoot back into the wild.
"...[Custodian] vision for the property is to develop visitor experiences that create lifelong connections to the place, whilst providing a sustainable income to support reinvestment into the property, create long term employment, community engagement with cultural heritage and help to grow the local visitor economy through the provision of accommodation options at varying price points," the town planning report reads.
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