Warrook Farm in Monomeith is attracting international visitors with its wide collection of animals and century-old homestead. Mark Maley introduced CASEY NEILL to the menagerie that calls the historical farm home.
“Our main customers are international. Groups come through almost every day.”
From camels and alpacas to Highland cows, goats, a miniature donkey, ponies, deer, kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, rabbits, sheep and birds – Warrook Farm has them all.
The 180-acre Monomeith property dates back to 1856. It’s believed the homestead was built in 1907 from bricks made on-site.
“A lot of people love coming up and visiting the old homestead,” Dianne Hastings said.
She has worked at the site for six years.
“I’m chef manager but when I started off I was just asked to come and help out in the kitchen,” she said.
She only worked a couple of days a week back then.
“Now I work six days a week most weeks, and 16 hour days when we do weddings,” she said.
“On Sunday I’ve got a wedding and I’ve got a 94th birthday.
“Nanna had her 93rd birthday here last year and wanted to come back.
“Once they come here then they keep coming.
“One couple has been coming for 14 years for lunch.
“They have a property at Inverloch but live in Melbourne.
“Each time they’re passing they call in for lunch.”
Dianne wants to further tap into the local market but said the task was tough.
“Our main customers are international,” she said.
“Groups come through almost every day.
“Some groups can be from four people up to 50 people.
“Today we’ve got two groups of 20 and a group of 10.”
The farm is a stop on the way to the tourist hot spot of Phillip Island.
“Eighty per cent of the people here will then go onto the island,” she said.
“We have a couple of little buses that don’t come for our tour or anything, but they call in here because it’s the half-way stop.”
About 13 locals work across the farm. The farm has passed through several hands, with the latest owner buying the property in May 2014.
He lives in Camberwell with his wife and children, and also owns a factory in China.
“This is about the fourth or fifth set of owners to run it as a tourism business,” Dianne said.
“It was pretty run down when these guys brought it.
“You had to put money into the ground to benefit from it.
“We cut our own hay this year for the first time.”
Dianne said the new owners had already invested in new animals, and she expected they’d continue to add to the collection of native and farm species.
“I think it’s going to be like Noah’s Ark, two of everything,” she said.
“I think there’s about 250 sheep.
“We sort of bought those because sheep shearing is part of our demonstrations.
“We have about 30 angus cows.
“This year will be the first year that they’re, hopefully, pregnant.
“The rest of our animals are purely for tourism.”
Warrook has a guided rural farm tour on a wagon.
It takes visitors to the dairy to watch a hand-milking demonstration and bottle-feed baby animals.
“Then they watch the working dog round up the sheep,” Dianne said.
“There’s a sheep-shearing demonstration where they talk about wool grading and lanolin.
“Then they learn how to crack a stock whip.”
Visitors can take a self-guided stroll through the fauna park and feed kangaroos and wallabies.
“We’ve got wombats which you can feed,” Dianne said.
“We’ve got the camels now that you can feed.
“Our aim is to have a couple of animals in each paddock.
“They can spend as long as they like then walking around.”
