Beleura’s story is a richly layered one. Now state listed, Beleura was home to successive generations of distinguished Australians over 160 years. Beleura is exceptional not only for its fine architecture and gardens but for the intimate and personal life it reveals of its last owner, the gentleman and composer, John Tallis.
Visitors will discover a personal story amidst the many household items, artefacts and collection of a life lived in residence at Beleura over 48 years. Now it has been left to future generations to enjoy.
Beleura is located on the lands of the Bunurong or Boon Wurrung people, the first peoples to occupy lands surrounding Port Phillip Bay, Westernport Bay and South West Victoria.
For most of its history the headland of Schnapper Point was a place for indigenous people to hunt and collect seafood. The cliff faces contain middens – shellfish remains – that are evidence of thousands of years of indigenous fishing and settlement of a rich and fertile land abundant with wildlife and marine life.
James Butchart, a successful merchant who supplied mutton to the Gold Rush settlements throughout Victoria, built Beleura in 1863 on 180 acres of a pastoral run he purchased overlooking Schnapper Point, now Mornington.
James Butchart commissioned architect Joseph Reed of the famed Melbourne firm of architects Barnes and Reed, to design an Italianate Villa in a Classical architectural style. Beleura was described as the finest mansion in the colony.
James Butchart died on the steps of Beleura in 1869.
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