Lake View House

Acclaimed Australian author Henry Handel Richardson immortalised Lake View in her trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. Built in 1870, the red brick house is furnished in period style recreating a lakeside country villa residence in a prosperous mining town. In 1876 Lake View House was home to Ethel Florence Richardson (known by her pen name Henry Handel Richardson), famous Australian writer and author of The Getting of Wisdom. Richardson depicted the house and her early life in Chiltern, under the fictional name of ‘Barambogie’, in The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, acclaimed as being one of Australia’s greatest novels. The Lake View collection includes examples of Richardson’s personal items including the desk on which she wrote her first novel.