Dunetown farmhouse brewery circular economy plans for Orbost

Young Orbost couple Chris and Gab Moore are “putting everything on the line” to create a new farmhouse brewery and malt house.

Sailors Grave Brewing owners Chris and Gab Moore with their children at the Dunetown site.

A Gippsland couple with big dreams are expanding their brewery and creating a local pilot malt house that they hope will breathe new life into their remote, rural community suffering economic decline with the demise of the timber industry.

Chris and Gab Moore started Sailors Grave Brewing at Orbost seven years ago, repurposing a 100 year old buttery factory on the banks of the Snowy River into a unique and successful brewery and taphouse.

Their plans to expand will become reality in the next eight months on their 80 hectare property at Point Ricardo, between Marlo and Cape Conran, where they are building a farmhouse style brewery destination.

The site will be known as Dunetown and incorporate innovation, tourism and hospitality with a beer hall inspired by the slatted barn shed vernacular unique to the local area, that will host events year round.

Sailors Grave Brewing hopes to build a beer shed in a similar style to the slatted shed vernacular unique to the Orbost region like this old drying shed on Marlo Road.

The precinct will feature upgraded brewing facilities and a pilot malting plant, supported by Food and Fibre Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley Authority. The couple hopes the malting facility will become a commercial social enterprise where locally grown grain can be processed to service the Victorian brewing and food sector demands as well as a corn whisky distillery.

Their mission for the business is to incorporate regenerative farming and circular economy practises with biomass waste reuse, water treatment and reuse, heat capture and reuse and the potential for a local energy micro-grid to feed back into local supply.

“Breweries are good for the circular economy because they can contribute to other industries with their waste product,” Chris said.

“We have those aspirations. We will reuse all our waste water for wash down. We produce a lot of heat and carbon dioxide which is great for green houses. We are really open to using our waste on site for other enterprises.

“We will use the spent grain for cows on the farm and we would love to do compost and bio fertiliser utilising all our solid wastes. It is one of those economic win wins.”

The Dunetown project was awarded a $2.35 million bushfire recovery grant for economic development and the Moores will need to contribute a further $3 million to bring the project to life. With the collapse of the local timber industry and the need to increase visitation, they see the project as a huge opportunity for economic recovery in the area.

“It has been quite stressful. We have to borrow an enormous amount more than we thought to fulfil the project. We are putting everything on the line, everything,” Chris said.

“The amount of money is daunting but what we will create is amazing. The dream in regional areas is that the kids grow up, they leave to see the world and they come back. You have to have things that make people want to come back and so there are jobs and exciting things for people to do.”

Sailors Grave Brewing owners Chris and Gab Moore. Picture: Richard Cornish

Gab said with the sun setting on the timber industry, it was necessary to shift the balance towards building the community up.

“It’s not just about creating jobs,” Gab said.

“It’s about building skills and bringing skilled people to the area and moving the economic dependence from one main industry to a lot of industries. In doing so you build skills and visitation and you start to get a vibrant community.

“We are committed to changing the language of Far East Gippsland being ‘the end of the line’ to it being the centre. We are uniquely positioned halfway between Melbourne and Sydney in a pristine wilderness environment that has so much to offer.”