McCrae Homestead

McCrae Homestead is an historic property located in McCrae, Victoria, Australia. It was built at the foot of Arthurs Seat, a small mountain, near the shores of Port Phillip in 1844 by Andrew McCrae, a lawyer, and his wife Georgiana Huntly McCrae (15 March 1804 – 24 May 1890), a portrait artist of note. The homestead is under the care of the National Trust of Australia, and is open to the public. Volunteers who are knowledgeable about the history of the house conduct tours and answer questions.

One of Victoria's oldest homesteads, it illustrates how early pioneers used whatever they found locally to build houses and farms using primitive construction techniques. The walls of the house are made of horizontal drop slab cut from local timbers including stringybark from the top of the mountain. Tuck, who was employed by the McCraes and assisted by the older boys of the family, used wattle and daub, bark, messmate shingles and sods as well as slabs and squared logs.

Georgiana designed the house and each detail such as the Count Rumford fireplace . The three thousand bricks necessary to build it were sent down the Bay from Williamstown to Arthurs Seat on the Jemima, a small sailing boat . The house is small but well thought out with a separate kitchen as was common at that time to prevent fires. A floorplan drawn up by Georgiana in 1850 exactly reflects the present layout of the homestead with a small addition being done on the side of the house in the 20th century.

Following the departure of the McCraes, (who resided at the homestead from 1844 to 1851), the interior structure of the house remained unchanged during the Burrell's seventy four year habitation, apart from the addition of two bay windows. (They resided at the homestead from 1851 to 1925 ) . John Twycross, a Burrell descendant, who had stayed at the house often as a child was able to point out the previous functions of each room, seventy five years later, such as where his bed had stood in the present child's bedroom, where his aunt Kate had roasted scallops in the open fireplace of the kitchen, as well as the location in the dining room of the Broadwood piano that had been dropped into the sea during transportation to "The Seat" and had thereafter been difficult to tune.

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