Romantic wedding venue Chateau Wyuna awaits a sale proposal
When it was raised in the early 1920s, largely out of materials fetched from the nearby landscape, it felt such a long way beyond Melbourne.
It was on the doorstep of the mist-catching Dandenong Ranges where massive mountain ash eucalypts grow so high and straight, and where lyrebirds sing. Certainly, there would have been platypuses in the Olinda Creek that still bisects the secluded property.
With a gabled log cabin made out of massive ash logs – some 18 metres long – Chateau Wyuna was created as a romantic evocation. It was built by artist Clarence Earle and he used it as an artist’s retreat and to host many concert performances.
Coming over from her Yarra Valley retreat, Dame Nellie Melba was such a regular visitor that the log cabin’s heritage citation says Earle installed a marble bath for her that was fed by the creek.
Although buffered by its 21,722-square-metre very treed block, Chateau Wyuna at 170 Swansea Road, Mount Evelyn, is now surrounded by outer suburbia. Yet it is still romantic enough to be one of Melbourne’s better-known wedding and events venues.
It is for sale as a going concern with some weddings already booked for 2024. Owners Andrew and Deborah Judkins – who met at the chateau – say they are testing it on the market because after successfully running it for 17 years they believe they’re still young enough to pursue some alternate business adventures.
With multiple operational possibilities and being marketed with a circa $3.5 million price guide by Scott Callow of CBRE in an expressions-of-interest campaign that closes on Monday June 27, Chateau Wyuna is spread over six different titles, which implies subdivision potential.
But that’s not the attribute Andrew Judkins particularly wants to emphasise. “I’d like to think subdividing it is a long way ahead,” he says. “It’s such a magical setting that I don’t want to imply that [a change of ownership] is an ending. I’d like to see it as a renewal, perhaps for people with fresh ideas?”
The sales campaign also suggests the possibility of a short-term lease back by the Judkins. “The potential buyers could run it, they could lease it to another operator, or lease it back to us for a while.”
Conscious of those brides who have booked the venue well ahead, Judkins emphasises “we’re not running out because we’ve really enjoyed being involved in so many weddings. We fully expect the business to continue.”
Apart from the log cabin built around a monumental fireplace constructed of river-smoothed rocks, and made of logs that were hauled to the property by bullock teams, over time Chateau Wyuna has operated as a restaurant and became a wedding venue in the 1980s, progressively gaining more reception spaces, a picturesque garden rotunda and a small chapel in the form of a 1909 weatherboard church that was relocated from nearby Montrose where the Church of Christ congregation had gathered.
The pretty chapel is also historically significant but in terms of business branding, the log cabin with its projecting upstairs room is the distinguishing icon.
Judkins says the chateau was originally built without the use of nails and contained built-in furniture that was also made of local and hand-adzed hardwoods. He says there were many similar bush-built cabins throughout the Dandenongs once, “but this is the last remaining original”.
