Moonlight Head Lodge - Spectacular Location, Attractive Comfortable Accommodation

Outstanding Heritage Status:

National Trust

Heritage Victoria

Australian Heritage Commission
- National Estate Register

Sandstone Chimney of the Wattle Hill Pub

Staging Post Destroyed in Ash Wednesday Bushfires 1983
The Old Staging Post
(Destroyed in Ash Wednesday Bushfires 1983)

Historic Buildings on the Premises

The Historic Former Wattle Hill Hotel - the only remaining early pub of the Otways.

Statement from the Register of the National Estate:
The former hotel on the old stagecoach route around MOONLIGHT HEAD exhibits a range of features associated with the early settlement of the Otways, including stagecoach transport, rescue from shipwrecks, smuggling, illegal spirit production and early horse racing. The only remaining early hotel of the Otways, it demonstrates a way of life in danger of being lost..

Statement from Heritage Victoria:
The WATTLE HILL HOTEL was built by Frank Harty using funds from a win on the Melbourne Cup. The bar, ladies' lounge, kitchen, scullery, dining room and seven bedrooms are set out in pre-Federation architecture. The predominantly single-storey weatherboard has a corrugated iron hip roof. The bars, seats, storage shelves, bedrooms and the kitchen/scullery are unaltered.

Moonlight Head is part of the Property

Moonlight Head is a bold, rounded and densely-timbered headland with an almost impenetrable undergrowth. It is the dominant coastal feature of the region. The huge headland rises out of the Southern Ocean as a spur of the Great Dividing Range. It was the first sighting of land for the sailing ships of the 1800’s riding in on the ‘Roaring Fourties’.

Explorer Matthew Flinders

Captain Matthew Flinders

In April 1802 the explorer Matthew Flinders named the giant headland ‘MOONLIGHT HEAD‘.

Matthew Flinders was exploring the Victorian coast in his ship ‘The Investigator’.

His diary notes:

“It was seldom that the weather would allow anything being distinguished beyond two miles; and when the night came on, we were quite uncertain of the trending of the coast. At eight o’clock, by favour of moon light and a short cessation of rain, land was perceived on the lee beam; it seemed to be a head of considerable elevation……………….”.

“I have seldom seen a more fearful section of coastline”.

Flinders had a miraculous escape from likely shipwreck on the jagged reefs of Moonlight Head.

Explorer Charles Latrobe

Explorer Charles Latrobe

Latrobe , Governor of Victoria 1839-1854, was an intrepid explorer. He undertook a number of treks along the west coast, endeavouring to reach Cape Otway to plan a lighthouse. The impenetrable forest at MOONLIGHT HEAD was a barrier. IN 1846 he found a route.

His diary:

"... the fifth day that we managed to fight our way through the terrible scrub and across the precipices of Moonlight Head”.

At MOONLIGHT HEAD the paths of FLinders and Latrobe, giants of Australian history, crossed with a time gap of 44 years.

Shipwrecks at Moonlight Head

Fiji 1891 (west of Moonlight Head)

Marie Gabrielle 1869 (west of Moonlight Head)

Jenny 1854

World War II Barge

Remnants of wrecks and anchors are still visible along the coastline.

Old Moonlight Head Cemetery

West of the property.The lonely resting place of tragic shipwreck victims, historic Otway figures and noteable former residents of the property.

Otway Aborigines

The Otway region was home to a tribe of aborigines. Prior to the arrival of Batman and Fawkner at Port Phillip, William Buckley, the wild white man, roamed the region among the aborigines for 32 years.
The explorer Gellibrand disappeared here and was thought to have been killed by aborigines.

William Buckley

The Moonlighters
LAWLESS GANGS AT MOONLIGHT HEAD

In the late 1880’s lawless gangs looted shipwrecks and illicitly distilled whisky at MOONLIGHT HEAD for sale in Melbourne.

These groups were tracked down by the famous Detective-Inspector John Mitchell Christie, ‘the Master of Disguise’.

John Mitchell Christie in one of his many disguises
Detective Inspector John Christie in one of his many disguises

Christie was the Australian fore-runner of Sherlock Holmes. In one incident a customs officer was thrown violently over the cliffs at MOONLIGHT HEAD by the notorious Wild Gang led by Dennis O’Brien.

BY MOONLIGHT HEAD

Sometime you’ll go where the pine trees sigh
When the moon is low in the Otway sky.
Where the night winds wail on the rolling rills
There’s a winding trail through the Otway hills.

Where the mountains climb from the swirling tide
And the hands of time have worked inspired,
There the dead men lie with the spars and stays
From the sailing ships of the early days.

You can talk to God in the Otway Ranges
Where the mountains high meet the ocean wide.
By the pounding seas you will walk with danger
Where the wild wind lives, where the big waves ride.

Where the ships of ghosts go sailing by
On the shipwreck coast; there the sailors lie.
They are all long dead by the cliffs and caves
Of the Moonlight Head in the white sea spray.

By permission KC c 1975

_________________________________

Quote: "There is a sense of overwhelming beauty, of profound mystery. The ghosts of the past preside. Strange creatures, 'Hobyahs', hobgoblins of the Bush, can be imagined cavorting in the moonlight among the ancient ferns and waterfalls" KC.

Hobyahs - Australian Bush Hobgoblins

In this place the power of Nature rules supreme.....

Horse riding along Moonlight Head