A heritage chalet in the mountains of north-east Victoria is reopening to visitors after years of closure. Its return is being staged in phases, so the site is coming back to life gradually.
A cafe opens this month, with apartments and accommodation for workers to follow. School camps will fill part of the building from next year.
Image: Mount Buffalo Chalet, by HiLo48 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
What is reopening, and when
The cafe at the Mount Buffalo Chalet opens this month, bringing a landmark back into public use after a 20 year hiatus, ABC News reported. The building is affectionately known as the grand old dame, and for many Victorians it has been a fixture of the mountains for most of a century.
The chalet sits at the top of Mount Buffalo, within the Alpine Shire in north-east Victoria. It has three storeys, 200 rooms and 108 bedrooms, and most rooms have an ensuite. None of the rooms are the same size, and every one is wood panelled.
Belgravia Outdoor Education and Parks Victoria are behind the reopening. Richard Thornton, the outdoor education group's chief executive, said the heritage listed building is extraordinary and there is nothing like it elsewhere in the world. He described it as a maze developed over years, where what you see is an adventure as you turn each corner.
The staged reopening
The return unfolds in stages. A cafe opens this month, 10 apartments open in October, accommodation for regional workers opens early next year, and the south wing is being renovated to hold 200 beds for school camps.
That sequence matters for visitors, because not everything in the plan is open straight away. When it is not hosting camps, the chalet will be available during school holidays and weekends for anyone wanting to revisit the building or see it for the first time.
About 5,000 students a year will attend camp on the mountain, staying in the chalet and exploring Mount Buffalo National Park. Mr Thornton said students can go caving, abseiling, kayaking and mountain biking there, and that you could walk for three days and not see another person.
The operator said it would work with Parks Victoria, Indigenous educators and people who have been connected with the chalet for decades. That circle of former staff, guests and local experts gives the reopening a deep well of memory to draw on as the building comes back to life.
A building with a long story
The chalet was built in 1910 and is the largest timber accommodation building in Australia, according to Parks Victoria. It appears on both the Victorian Heritage Register and the National Heritage List. A heritage listing is a formal recognition that a place has special architectural, historical or social value, and it shapes how the building can be changed and maintained.
Parks Victoria manages the site, and Belgravia Group holds a 40 year lease to run experiential learning programs there through Belgravia Outdoor Education. The lease was announced in December 2024, after a process that began in 2019, with public access maintained through a cafe and information centre open year round.
The building's quirks carry its history. All the wood was milled on the mountain, and Lake Catani was built as part of that milling process. Construction happened so quickly that the timber was very green, which means some walls, floors and panelling have warped over time.
Chris Derrick, from Parks Victoria, said the dining room still holds the Queen's table, an oblong table used on a royal train when Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip toured Australia in 1954. He recalled visiting the chalet as a young child in the 1970s, and bringing his then girlfriend, now his wife, back in the 1990s.
Mr Derrick also remembered an older couple who peered through a window during the reopening works. The couple had worked at the chalet in the 1960s, where they met, and he brought them inside for a tour of the rooms they once knew.
The chalet was originally to be built of stone, but that was cost prohibitive, so timber was chosen. Mr Derrick credited an early 1900s vision by the Victorian premier at the time, Sir Thomas Bent, in seeing the tourism potential of Mount Buffalo.
The chalet has been threatened by major bushfires, most notably in 1939 and 2006. It closed after the 2006 fire, which destroyed nearby infrastructure such as the Cresta Valley Ski Lodge. Mr Derrick said maintaining a timber building in an alpine area that is very wet in winter and prone to bushfires in summer is a serious challenge, and he credited local preparation and expertise for keeping it safe.
What it means for the region
Alex Lord, a director of the Belgravia group and chair of Belgravia Outdoor Education, said he knew the building's potential as soon as he stepped inside. He described it as Australia's largest wooden structure, one that had sat empty for two decades, and said he would love to host other events there in future.
Upgrades have covered electricity, solar and wastewater, and Parks Victoria said the reactivation is expected to create more than 50 jobs, including traineeships in outdoor education and hospitality.
For travellers planning spring and summer trips, the chalet adds a headline destination to Victorian nature and outdoor attractions. The cafe gives visitors a reason to stop on the mountain, and the accommodation stages will widen the options over the next year.
Readers can explore other parts of the state through the Victoria local guide.
Works Cited
Aldridge, Ashlee, and Gaye Pattison. "Mount Buffalo Chalet Gets New Lease on Life Thanks to School Camps for Future Generations." ABC News, 17 Sept. 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-17/mount-buffalo-chalet-set-to-reopen-victoria/107158052.
Parks Victoria. "New Future for Iconic Mt Buffalo Chalet." Parks Victoria, 12 Dec. 2024, https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/media-releases/2024/12/12/03/28/new-future-for-iconic-mt-buffalo-chalet.
HiLo48. "MtBuffaloChalet August 2018." Wikimedia Commons, 5 Sept. 2018, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MtBuffaloChalet_August_2018.jpg.