McCrae Homestead Roof Restoration - Heritage and Culture 2026 Tidy Towns Finalist
The roof tiles on McCrae Homestead had to come from Canada. That's the kind of detail that makes heritage restoration expensive, and exactly why the National Trust's Mornington Peninsula Branch had to fundraise hard to fix it.
Built from 1843 by the McCrae family, among the earliest colonial settlers on the Peninsula (the suburb takes its name from them), the homestead later passed to the Burrell family for 75 years, before the National Trust bought it back from a McCrae descendant's estate in 1971 and opened it to the public the following year. Its timber roof, most recently a layer of cedar shingles, had deteriorated badly enough to threaten the building's future.
Sourcing replacement cedar tiles from Canada pushed the cost well beyond routine maintenance, met through local and descendant family donations alongside the National Trust Foundation. Geelong roofer Wayne Thomas of W T Roofing Services, trained in traditional UK roofing techniques including thatch, slate and shingle work, led the removal and rebuild, working around weather delays through to completion in 2025.
The Trust's key lesson: heritage conservation lives or dies on finding the right specialist trade skills, and they're rarer than the funding itself.
The X-factor is visible the moment you look up: a 183-year-old homestead standing on a roof built to last another century.
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