North Lorne, Little Colac

A residential area in North Lorne was known as Little Colac because many people from Colac built holiday homes in this area. Houses often had fibrous cement sheet cladding and were named after districts around Colac such as Nalangil and Warrion. Nalangil was an unpainted cement sheet house with a central gable over the porch. Warrion was a 1920s cement sheet clad house with projecting wings, with a verandah between, paired windows with 6-paned upper sashes and decorative timbering in the gable.

Covering the area along the Great Ocean Road and Dorman Street, between Stony Creek and Erskine River, Little Colac suffered in the 1939 bushfire when twenty houses and the swing bridge were destroyed.

About 1999, the Surf Coast Shire identified Lorne’s “Little Colac” precinct as historically, architecturally and socially significant. At the time it was thought to be distinctive within the Lorne township for the number of remaining intact small timber and fibro cement houses of the 1930s, 1940s and later, built as holiday houses for Colac families and families from other rural farming areas. The design of these houses was typical of the styles adopted for many modest homes in Victoria’s seaside resort areas.

Source

• Lorne Neighbourhood Character Study
• The Age, 14 Jan 1939, page 39
• Surf Coast Shire Precincts Assessment 1999
• Surf Coast Shire Heritage Overlay 2006