Lorne Victoria Australia

There is a substantial tract of land just beyond the limits of the Lorne township that has long been known as ‘the Slaughterhouse site.’  Similar sites can be found at the edges of most country towns.

Lorne’s Slaughterhouse site is an exposed, windswept, rather wild, and very beautiful parcel of undeveloped land that stretches to the south of Hird Street [the last street in Lorne].  Its frontage skirts around the Great Ocean Road towards the [St] George River to the south, while its rear nestles back against the Queens Park Reserve.  Bushwalkers will know it as the starting point of the Tramway Track that follows the old timber railway from the lower contours of Teddy’s Lookout to the George River bridge.  Its seaward aspect looks out over Bass Strait and, from its southern corner, the mouth of the George River.

While the Slaughterhouse site is largely unknown to most, it still surfaces when a plot of land is being considered for development, though I fervently hope that it will remain forever untouched.  Like the Anglesea Heath that edges the southern border of Anglesea, Lorne’s Slaughterhouse site creates an untamed border at the southern edge of the town that is both charming and primitive.  Long may that be so!

As its name suggests, the site was once Lorne’s killing field … a place where the animals that provided necessary protein for the township were brought to be killed and dismembered.  Lorne’s timber industry and hinterland, the hospitality industry that underpinned its burgeoning reputation as a tourist destination, and later the returned diggers who built the road—all demanded and received animal protein from the slaughterhouse.  Like most like sites in most towns and villages, it was tucked away ‘around a corner and out of public sight’, as the thought of slaughtering animals for food was troubling to the public conscience and was anathema to Victorian-era sensibilities.  To be out of sight and out of mind was essential.

However, like it or not, ‘slaughter and eat’ is an embedded cornerstone of every food chain … indeed every living creature kills and consumes, and the human omnivore is at [or close to] the top of that often cruel but necessary food chain.

One observation perfectly captures this history when, several years ago, as part of his school project on ‘The History of Lorne’, one enterprising Lorne P-12 College student created an excellent video series documenting the memories of some of our key living treasures.  During his sit-down interview with Henry Love, Henry correctly observed that “any meat eaten in the early decades of Lorne walked into town” to be slaughtered locally.  Animal death to satisfy human needs has always been ‘a fact of life’.

For as long as there has been a recorded history, slaughtermen have provided this essential service.  While vegetarians and vegans would take issue with my phrase ‘essential service’, this is not the place to argue the pros and cons of the vegan cause.  Suffice to say that slaughtermen are expected to adhere to a strict code of ethics that ensures that animals are treated with respect, dispatched as humanely as possible, and later butchered efficiently and well.

Slaughtermen and butchers are different beasts.  While in past centuries, the two were blended as one, nowadays a slaughterman stuns, kills, skins, eviscerates, then splits and hangs animal carcasses for cool room curing.  Meanwhile, a butcher provides a retail outlet where skilled craftsmen [butchers] break down a slaughterman’s cured and prepared carcasses into defined ‘cuts’ for customer consumption.  Lorne has ‘hosted’ both functions.

Slaughtering—ever a gruesome task—has traditionally been undertaken out of sight and out of mind of the public view, while butchering has held such general fascination that it is routinely conducted ‘on main street’ and in full public view.  As the Lorne township evolved, animal slaughter was relegated to ‘around the corner’ where a slaughter yard was built on the tract of open land facing the Southern Ocean beyond Hird Street, the most southerly street in Lorne.  Windswept, cold, and isolated from the rest of the town, the Slaughterhouse site was far enough away from the public gaze to avoid offending the tourists who were flocking to the town in the late 19th century.

Slaughtering was first ‘approved’ in December 1887 when the Winchelsea Shire Council approved a slaughter licence for William Devling.  In February 1889, he transferred it to his brother-in-law, Hamilton Dorman [proposed: Councillor Hopkins, seconded: Councillor Mountjoy].  Then, in 1910, Thomas Brown was granted a renewal of his slaughterman’s licence—for a fee—but, thereafter, the slaughterhouse trail runs cold.  It is not mentioned in the LHS records after 1920.

This is not surprising, given that rail transport was now nearby, roads were improving, and economies of scale were forcing the closure of small regional slaughterhouses in favour of larger, more efficient centralised abattoirs.  In this context, there was little need for each town to sustain local killing, so, along with many others, Lorne’s slaughter field finally fell silent.

Butchering—once an indispensable occupation in every small town—also began to struggle to compete with a food distribution industry that was rapidly centralising.  It is easy to forget how much past generations depended on the local shops.  The butcher, greengrocer [for fruit and veggies], fish shop, delicatessen, and grocer [where the staples came in bulk and were scooped into paper bags—who can forget Ivy’s bangs] … all have largely gone.  Now our beef, lamb, pork, and chicken come conveniently pre-packed, vacuum-sealed, or cryovaced, and only a few butchers now remain, at markets or where a point of difference or niche market can be sustained.  Although Stabby’s still hangs on in Anglesea, Lorne’s mid-town butcher shop fell to the bell-toll and closed after more than a century of continuous service to the town.

Jim and Hamilton Dorman opened Lorne’s first butcher shop at the end of Grove Road in 1879.  After wielding their knives and saws until the mid-1920s, they briefly sold it to the Muirs from Forrest before Jack and Toby Alsop bought it.  After years of Alsop rule, it was purchased by Nash Button Challis, who came to Lorne for a holiday, met Silvia Clissold, and stayed … Challis’s it remained thereafter.

Challis’s shop, with its iconic, white-tiled frontage and its deep-set, scalloped verandah, remains to this day, tucked into its bend on Mountjoy Parade as an echo of a bygone era.  Meanwhile, beyond Point Grey, the ghosts of slain animals prowl the night and the Slaughterhouse site remains wild and untamed … just as it should.

Sources:

• Surf Coast Times, The Committee for Lorne page, 5 Sept 2025, Feature Writer John Agar