THE Opposition has warned that Whittlesea could lose one of its historic green wedge farming properties — expected to fetch more than $5 million at auction — to developers.
The 124-hectare throughbred horse stud, Mornmoot, which will be sold next month for the third time in just over a century, is being touted for its housing development potential.
Agents Pat Rice & Hawkins said in a prepared statement that the property was located in a “future residential development zone” and had residential estates within a kilometre of its boundary.
Opposition planning spokesman Brian Tee said the state government was expanding its urban growth boundaries into green wedges and he was “very concerned” Mornmoot would become a housing estate.
“This is part of Victoria’s heritage and it would be a tragedy if it was carved up for housing,” Mr Tee said.
“Once housing is in place and green wedge is gone, the open spaces are gone forever.”
He said the government’s next biennial review of urban growth boundaries was due in November, following its announcement in June of six new suburbs on Melbourne’s fringe, including Lockerbie and Lockerbie North, which take in parts of the City of Whittlesea.
The agent’s publicist John Kennedy said buyers would be “mindful . . . of both Mornmoot’s ability to continue to operate in the future as a thoroughbred horse stud and for its future development potential”.
The owner Robert Thompson said he knew he was buying “history” when he bought the property a decade ago. “Horses bred on Mornmoot are well recognised by the racing industry and I have sold yearlings and two-year-old racing stock for up to $250,000,” he said.
It was home to the champion Victorian racehorse and stallion, Century, in the 1970s and 1980s.
The homestead was built by Russell Chirnside about 1900, and was later owned by Neville Young of Melbourne’s Young and Jackson Hotel and David Leighton of the Leighton Group.
