Plans for a glamping development at Elevated Plains now looks to have been indefinitely shelved.

The glamping development that had been mooted for a site at Charlies Rd, now seems to to have been abandoned following a four year fight in Hepburn Shire Council and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

VCAT had recently approved a planning permit for the site after protracted hearings but put a raft of conditions on the proposed development which may potentially have significantly reduced the commercial viability of the project.

The Hepburn Shire Council had initially considered a planning application by Hilltop@Hepburn for the development in June, 2020.

The proposal was for tourist accommodation, with safari tents and yurts on a site of around eight hectares.

The land was zoned as a Farming Zone and had bushfire and environmental significance overlays.

Although council officers at the time recommended approval of the project, councillors had knocked back the application on the grounds that it was inappropriate use of land zoned for farming and that there was a high fire risk and poor access along Charlies Rd.

The Council decision was later supported by VCAT.

The developer had resubmitted the application with a new draft bushfire emergency management plan that was approved by the CFA.

However, the council had once again overruled council officers and again refused the application which had then returned to VCAT in June 2022.

VCAT eventually set aside the council decision and approved a planning permit in June 2024. The permit included strict conditions to mitigate fire risk.

A requirement that the site be closed on fire risk days meant that the site would not be able to open for most of the summer period and may have made any bookings subject to cancellation at short notice.

The property is now for sale, listed with JellisCraig with a price range of $1.6-$1.7 million.

Hepburn Springs local Jim Milesi reckons he may well be Australia’s only professional speech therapist who also works as a dry stone wall builder.

It’s a part-time occupation that lately his brother, Vince, is also enjoying.

The Milesi brothers are currently working to restore a 30-metre stretch of an extensive historic dry stone wall on the private property of Trefor John and Tina Winzar at Elevated Plains just out of Hepburn Springs.

Running alongside the Hepburn Springs-Newstead Road, the wall is understood to be about 130-140 years old and one of many built by the area’s early Swiss-Italian immigrants who include the Milesi’s own forbearers.

 “This is a dream job,” says Jim whose love of the time-honoured art of dry stone walling started way back in childhood on the family’s Hepburn Springs property.

“We had some dry stone walling on the family property and I always liked it and started mucking around with it then,” he says.

Much later in life, while working as a speech therapist in Kyneton about six years ago Jim noticed a man building a “beautiful dry stone retaining wall”.

This observation would lead to him furthering his own dry stone walling skills by working alongside Evan Pierce, a renowned dry stone wall builder with Kyneton Dry Stone Walling.

“Every day was a master class with Evan,” says Jim who recently launched out independently as a part-time dry stone waller.

“I’ve been doing it for a long time but up until the last few years years I didn’t think I’d ever get paid to do it,” says Jim who’s also travelled to northern Italy and furthered his dry stone walling skills there as well.

For the current project Jim has been joined by brother Vince who has an equally surprising professional background for a dry stone waller – voice acting.

Many will have caught the television series Kitty Is Not A Cat for which Vince provided various cartoon cat voices, among his myriad other projects in the arts sector.

Currently taking a break from city life Vince is clearly enjoying working as a part-time dry stone waller as well.

“At the moment I’m enjoying a different pace of life and taking on new skills,” Vince says.

Jim says the stretch of wall that they’re working on at Elevated Plains continues the restoration of the wall started several years ago by accomplished dry stone waller, Josh Bowes.

“Dry stone walls are amazing,” Jim says.

“They provide a microclimate for lizards, birds, even bats. There is no mortar. They’re free-draining and, as a retaining wall, if they’re built property, they’re the best.”

 To restore the historic wall on the Elevated Plains property they’re sourcing the material – natural stone – from the site itself.

It’s physical work – pretty much a “full-body work out” – but it’s also good for the mind as well says Jim who has now built walls in locations including Yandoit, Daylesford, Buninyong and Rockbank, with local councils increasingly keen to conserve their unique heritage value.

“The concepts are simple. There’s not a lot of technical things to remember,” he says.

“I love them. In a sense this is a building form that hasn’t changed in thousands of years.”

With a fair bit more of the current wall to be restored beyond the 30-or-so metres that they’ve been engaged to work on, Jim says that if the property owners are happy for them to keep going he’d jump at the chance to take on more of this age-honoured art form that he loves.

“It will teach you patience. It will teach you humility,” Jim says.

“I appreciate that it’s almost thrusting mindfulness upon you. You can’t really be worrying about other things when you are thinking about what you’re doing on the wall.”

Property owner Trefor John says there’s probably about a kilometre of walls on the block, “some very dilapidated and some almost intact”.

“We’d love to restore it all but, realistically, time and funds are the limiting factors,” Trefor says.

“We’ll do what we can with what we’ve got. A drystone wall is a thing of beauty. A dilapidated or damaged wall is a sad thing.” 

Jim says he could talk about the art of dry stone walling all day, and is often in luck on this front as quite a few appreciative and observant passers-by have stopped for a chat.

“I’d encourage anyone who sees us to come and say G’day,” he says.

Words: Eve Lamb

Four piece nu-soul/deep-funk act from Daylesford, Elevated Plains plays the Palais in Hepburn next Friday night, December 15.

Hard to pigeon hole, the sound is a bass-heavy, percussive groove with a psychedelic vibe designed to be danced-to… Think Talking Heads meets Hiatus Kaiyote in a bar in Berlin, perhaps.

The act includes well known singer Sallie Harvey, Dave Marshall on guitar (ex Wizzpoppa / TST), Al Stanley on drums and Cameron Saunders on bass (cellula / Ezc / ZebraHeard! + Automata Recordings).

Support on the night will be Bangquatsch, an exciting live drumming and global dance music project by Maarten Stenakur. Local legend Clay Ravin will DJ afterwards.