Community
24 June, 2026
Historical hall to receive facelift
THE Heytesbury District Historical Society museum hall in Port Campbell will be seeing upgrades thanks to a $48,000 investment from the Victorian State Government.
The State Government recently announced round three recipients of the Tiny Towns Fund, with projects sharing in $20 million in grant funding to promote Victoria’s tiniest towns.
Included in the recipients were the Heytesbury District Historical Society for the upgrading of their museum hall, which treasurer Peter Younis said needed refurbishment.
“Specifically, the roof needs replacement, the outside needs painting and some of the rotten timber needs repairing,” he said.
“This hall was shifted here in 1952 after the original hall burnt down.
“The original hall was built in 1888, and the building and all the contents were completely destroyed by fire in January 1949.”
Previous works on the hall include painting, having the floor pulled up, rewired, polished and repaired and having new windows put in.
“Living in Port Campbell, it’s an old building, and just maintaining it is an ongoing project,” Mr Younis said.
“We just have to continually work at it.”
Mr Younis said the historical society committee were thrilled to receive the Tiny Towns funding, without which the works would not be possible.
“We’re very grateful that we managed to secure this funding, so thank you to Regional Development Victoria, the Tiny Towns Fund and the State Government,” he said.
“We want to give a really big thank you from us to them because it’s a significant grant that’s allowed us to do significant work.
“We certainly are very grateful that we got it and thank the government for the grant.”
Secretary Gavin Deppeler said the committee relied on grants to keep the museum open.
“It’s really hard these days, especially for a small enterprise,” he said.
“We’ve got the craft shop in the front and the craft ladies open the hall for us and look after the desk.
“To maintain the collection and maintain the hall is incredibly expensive so if you’re just a volunteer organisation, you don’t get much income at all, if any, and you rely on grants and that sort of thing.”
The museum itself has a broad range of historical documents, period ephemera and old things of interest on display, covering the area which used to be the old Heytesbury Shire.
Some displays include the contents of old shops, rocket gear for the cliff rescue squad, shipwreck finds, photo boards of the area, First Nations artefacts and a display dedicated to the Loch Ard wreck.
“Probably one of our most important things that we do is we digitise,” Mr Deppeler said.
“People bring in their family photos and those photos are either donated to us or people can just bring them in and we digitise them and put them on a data bank.
“In the case of someone’s house burning, in a lot of cases they lose their photos.
“But, if we’ve got them digitised, then they’re archived here and they don’t lose them.”
Mr Deppeler said thanks to the craft store at the front of the hall, the historical society museum was able to be opened a lot more compared to most other historical societies.
“We’re open most weekends and most days over the holiday period,” he said.
Anyone is welcome to approach the society with requests for historical information, which they have archived in their hall.
“So much of our requests for information are related to people and families,” Mr Younis said.
Minister for Regional Development Michaela Settle said it was thanks to grants like the Tiny Towns Fund which kept these local community groups alive.
“Some of Victoria’s best communities are also our smallest, and the Tiny Towns Fund is helping make sure they have the facilities and infrastructure they need to thrive,” she said.
“Labor is proud to back our smallest towns because we know strong regional communities are built through sustained investment, not cuts.”
Read More: Port Campbell