Planning Minister appoints panel to consider permanent heritage protections of crumbling 164-year-old Waurn Ponds homestead

The state’s planning minister has appointed a panel to advise Geelong council on its push to slap permanent heritage protections on a crumbling 164-year-old Waurn Ponds homestead.

The state’s planning minister has appointed a panel to advise Geelong council on its push to slap permanently heritage protections on a crumbling 164-year-old Waurn Ponds homestead.

The move to appoint an independent panel, at the council’s request, came despite a critical structural engineering report in May describing the deteriorating property as “more hovel than mansion” and “a risk to life”.

Councillors last month unanimously voted to request the forming of the panel to consider 36 submissions received by the city responding to the permanent heritage overlay it had drawn up to protect the 1857-built Claremont Homestead on Kinsmead St in Waurn Ponds.

The submissions include 32 statements supporting the heritage protection, and three objections to the move submitted by site owners.

Claremont is the original farmhouse on the Waurn Ponds hill east of Ghazeepore Rd.

But, the city’s Heritage Review and the Statement of Significance regarding the property were made without a “close-up external view” or “inspection of the integrity of the inside of the house”.

A damning structural engineering report handed to the city in May described the house as a “risk to life”, and warned much of it needed to be demolished.

“The house has solid single-brick external walls and internal walls, made of 110mm thick single-skin bricks, that are physically deteriorating and honestly, are the worst-quality bricks this engineer has seen in his 20 years in the construction industry,” the report warned.

“I don’t think there would be a builder alive who would put their insurance on the line to say that any of the masonry in this building are able to be kept.

“The two most externally obvious visual elements, the walls and roof, won’t survive as they are, and have no hope of remaining as original elements.

WHY DID THE ENGINEER’S REPORT RAISE SO MANY CONCERNS? SEE THE PHOTOS HERE

“The only purpose of keeping this building would be to act as education tool, to show engineers, architects, builders, building surveyors, and others what terrible-masonry looks like, and how poor construction practices lead to long-term unfixable defects.

“We believe occupant health and safety takes precedence over attempting to maintain elements of buildings that are clearly beyond-repair and dangerous.”

Claremont occupies a 6156sq m property at 12-16 Kinsmead St, the remnants of a 100ha farm south of Geelong owned by four generations of the Baum family.

Gottfried Baum purchased Claremont in 1894. Fifth-generation grandchildren also spent formative years on the farm.

The homestead’s last occupant, Kenneth Baum, died in 2019, aged 90, months after Geelong’s council renamed a neighbouring reserve Baum Park.