A talk given by Michelle Price, National Trust Manager of Lake View
January 3, 2026
Hi everyone, and welcome to Lake View. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Janey, and thank you to the Society for the invitation.
I’ve been coming to this picnic as a guest for many years now with my Mum, Betty, enjoying the wonderful company, the picnic itself, and listening to so many illustrious speakers. It really is my favourite Chiltern event of the year. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve lived here for over 30 years and raised a family here with my husband, Craig.
Before stepping into my current role with the National Trust in March just gone, I spent the past 16 years as the Library Manager at Catholic College in Wodonga. I’ve since retired from that role and very happily began a new chapter as the Chiltern National Trust Property Coordinator.
I was interviewed for this role here, in Lake View itself. The interview took place in the beautiful drawing room on a very hot February day. I was interviewed by the Executive Manager and the Head of HR and later in the month there was a morning tea so I that could meet the volunteers and begin getting to know the people who bring this place to life. From there, it was straight into the induction process, which was planned to run over a couple of days. My manager came up from Melbourne for those two days, and on the very first morning—leaving the motel—she dropped and smashed my new laptop and what could have been an inconvenience turned into one of those unexpected turning points. After a full first day being inducted in person around the sites, she suggested we pause and continue later once a replacement laptop could be sent up. And in passing, I said, “well What if I actually come down to Melbourne tomorrow and continue the induction there, and pick up a new laptop while I’m at it?”
I’m so grateful that this little mishap occurred, because it led to something genuinely wonderful. I went down to Melbourne and immediately found myself at Trust headquarters, in the beautiful Tasma at Parliament Place, meeting staff face-to-face right from the get-go. It quickly removed any sense of distance, replacing it with real connections, familiar faces, and everyday conversations… And best of all, it meant that I was there not just as a new staff member, but as a familiar face for Chiltern too—right from the beginning.
We’ve had a great deal of visitation to Chiltern from National Trust staff throughout the year, and that support has been enormously valuable as I’ve settled into the role. That has ranged from a visit by our CEO — who herself is relatively new in the position — Collette Brennan. Collette brings an incredibly rich and varied background, and she was previously the CEO of the Abbotsford Convent. Her visit reflected an activation-focused perspective on heritage places and contributed positively to the ongoing work at the site. Following that, the merchandising team came up and gave the gift shop at Dow’s a complete refresh, bringing it more closely into line with Trust merchandise across the state. They also inducted me into the new electronic point-of-sale systems now operating at each site.
We’ve also had visits from the state volunteer manager and held some lovely socials, and more recently we’ve done filming at Dow’s — which was great fun and, I should say, very much my introduction to the world of social media. As you’d expect, we have regular visits from maintenance teams, and we’re fortunate to have a heritage bricklayer who comes up and gives the sites an extraordinary level of care and attention – a rare and highly specialised skill. And speaking of rare things, you may or may not be aware that the Victorian Goldfields are currently part of a bid for UNESCO World Heritage listing bid. That process is well underway, and I’m very much looking forward to paying close attention to Chiltern’s Trust properties in this role in as this story continues to unfold. In March next year, we’ll also be hosting the Victorian Heritage Council to the Chiltern properties, and I’m particularly looking forward to observing those conversations. That visit will include Samantha Westbrooke, the Head of Conservation and Advocacy, along with the CEO – a significant moment for our town and our heritage places.
As you can imagine, across our three properties there are thousands of individual objects, each requiring conservation, care, cleaning—or sometimes just plain attention. And honestly, the pleasure of familiarising yourself with these objects is half the joy of the role. This year alone, we’ve had a beautiful mirror replaced in one of the bedrooms here at Lake View. We’ve also had one of our treasured samplers come down with a rather dramatic crash from the hallway wall. That sampler is currently back in Melbourne undergoing professional restoration and conservation and, thankfully, is due to return soon. Looking ahead, next year marks a significant conservation milestone for Lake View House: the restoration of several chimneys. A number of them require urgent attention, and as you can imagine, this is highly specialised work. It involves a team and a cherry picker on site and the expertise of our extraordinary heritage bricklayer, Ray Wiltshire. Chimneys in their current condition allow water ingress, and without sound rooves or the all-important “hat” on top of a building, the knock-on effects for a heritage building are enormous—impacting timbers, interiors, and the long-term health of the house itself. So we very much look forward to this work proceeding in the coming year, knowing how vital it is to the future of the building.
One of my absolute highlights this year has been the return of the official portrait dress that HHR wore for her professional photograph. This story began with Heather Payne, one of our Lake View guides, alerting me to the existence of the dress—a remarkable object that hadn’t been sighted for quite some time. I was able to follow this up with collection managers back at Tasma Terrace, and together we explored the possibility of bringing the dress back to Lake View for a short visit. The dress has now been here for several months—longer than it ideally should be, truth be told—because it is a textile, and textiles are among the most fragile objects in any collection. They require very specialised care that we simply cannot provide full time on site. Here at Lake View, textiles are vulnerable to insects, dust, light exposure, and unintentional handling. So each weekend, as the house opens, the dress is carefully boxed and unboxed. It may not be the most visually dramatic display—it rather looks as though it’s lying in state on the bed—but it is genuinely the safest way we can share it with visitors. And what a privilege it is. To look at the dress, and then look at the photograph, and think: she wore that. The dress is likely close to 100 years old, made of beautiful velvet, and it has stood up astonishingly well to the test of time, with remarkably little damage. It is an extraordinary object, and while we very much look forward to bringing it back to Lake View in the future, we respect its essential need to spend portions of its life in conservation—so that it can be enjoyed well into the future.
The other significant object that is currently absent from Lake View—but carries a wonderful story – is the Ouija board. Since August last year, it has been on loan to the State Library of Victoria, where it will remain until May this year. The board was requested by Michelle Moo, State Library Exhibitions Manager to feature in an exhibition titled ‘Creative Acts’. ‘Creative Acts’ invites visitors to step into the unseen – to explore the intense, sometimes otherworldly forces that drive artistic creation. The Ouija is on display as is HHR’s typewriter with mention of her use of the board as a “divination tool to communicate with her deceased husband”. While we certainly miss having the Ouija board on site—especially given the rich role it plays in our tour experience— “The National Trust is proud to see this included in an exhibition of this calibre. Its inclusion enables Henry Handel Richardson’s story to reach new audiences and to continue beyond the walls of Lake View. At its best, custodianship extends beyond preservation to the sharing of stories across places and contexts.”
As you can imagine, volunteering is the backbone—the lifeblood—of keeping these properties alive and in the public eye. Midway through the year, we undertook a volunteer recruitment drive with the support of our State Volunteer Manager, who did a real whip-around of the surrounding catchment areas we might draw from. As a result, I’m very pleased to say that we welcomed seven new volunteers into our team. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that if anyone here tonight has ever considered volunteering at the properties—or perhaps hasn’t yet but is now curious—please feel free to come and have a chat with me later. I can honestly say that volunteering as a guide is a wonderful experience. There is so much to be gained from it. While the tours themselves are guided by a documented script for each property, volunteering also allows for a very personal and individual experience. Over time, each volunteer finds their own individual emphasis—their own little nuggets of gold—those aspects of the property or the story that they particularly enjoy speaking to or simply holding close while they’re on site. Lately, I’ve had the pleasure of volunteering on my own here at Lake View, and it is such a beautiful property to experience on so many levels. There’s the heritage of the property itself, the history of Henry Handel Richardson, and then there’s simply the act of being here. Some days, no one comes through the door. It’s rarely rushed. But riding out the quieter days and the not-so-quiet days, I find that the tranquillity of the space fills those gaps beautifully. It gives me the time to really immerse myself in the heritage—to disappear down a rabbit hole or two – and to continue building my knowledge of both the property and of Henry Handel Richardson herself, which is just endlessly enjoyable.
The job of keeping the story of the house alive – and bedding down all of those stories so they remain accessible into the future – is a central part of what we do. We’ve got a couple of significant dates coming up. This year, the Trust itself is celebrating 75 years, and as part of that, each property has been tasked with marking the year of inception – 1956 – in some kind of visual or interpretive way that is particular to their site. At Lake View, we’re currently exploring the ABC Radio serialisation of The Fortunes of Richard Mahony that was broadcast on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night at 6pm EST 1956 and ran for about a year. We’re investigating whether that recording still exists and whether we might be able to access it in some form.
March this year marks 80 years since the death of Henry Handel Richardson. This anniversary offers a moment to consider how her work continues to resonate and how it might be appropriately acknowledged.
At a broader National Trust level, there is a professional and academically grounded initiative underway known as PNVE – Property Notes and Visitor Experience. This project is creating a centralised digital archive and invites volunteers and site managers to backfill the online repository with property notes, images, local lore, spoken-word stories, newspaper articles—essentially anything that contributes to the life story of a place. The aim is to situate all of this material in one accessible location for future interpretation and for researchers in years to come. We’ve been very fortunate to have an intern from Swinburne University, Tex, who has been applying his specialised skills to the Chiltern properties. He’s been gathering information from a wide range of sources, alongside the bits and pieces we’ve been able to contribute, to help build the Chiltern archive within this project. At this point, we would also like to acknowledge and congratulate the Henry Handel Richardson Society on the remarkable archive it has created over many years. The website and newsletter are an absolute wealth of information and a genuine pleasure to explore—and have shared this valuable site with our intern for research and exploration.
It was wonderful to hear Angela Neustatter deliver her talk at the Lyceum Club on Henry Handel Richardson and her sister Lil, earlier last year and to take the executive manager along to experience first-hand the depth of interest in Henry Handel Richardson & the society. Seeing that interest in full force—her work, her history, her family and the community that surrounds it—was incredibly affirming. It was also lovely to see familiar faces there, people we’ve come to know through this picnic over the years, gathered together in celebration in such a beautiful venue.
I’d like to close by saying how much we look forward to the continued friendships that grow from this shared work. They may be annual, but the pleasure is enduring. Being involved in celebrating Lake View and Henry Handel Richardson—and continuing her story in partnership with the Society—is something we at the Trust value enormously.
Thank you very much