A wonderfully wet Sunday afternoon saw the official opening of the restored Mooramong Soldier settler's garage. ('Wonderfully wet' because Mooramong is in the grip of the worst drought since records began in the 1880s.) The soldier's 'garage' is a rare survival of a once common small prefabricated building supplied to returning servicemen after World War 2. The huts were supplied along with a land allocation for soldiers who were prepared to 'give it a go' to have the opportunity to own their own land and make a living for their families. Scobie and Claire MacKinnon then owners of Mooramong granted ten allotments to returning soldiers totaling over half the farm and averaging around 600 acres per soldier.

One former soldier settler who took land here said of Scobie on the day, '....he rode up to me on a fine hunter, I felt guilty at taking his land and asked him what he thought having us soldiers on his land, he said that he was glad to have us there and could manage well enough with the land he had by managing it more efficiently, he said that if there was anything he could do for me, all I needed to do was ask.'

The 'garage' (shown right with the Trust's contemporary 'grey' Fergie) has been carefully recorded, dismantled and relocated to the site by staff and supporters from the community ahead of Anzac day, to commemorate and mark the importance of the soldier settlers who moved to country Victoria and 'had a go' and raised their families here. The rolled corrugated iron hut, which consists of just one large open space hence 'garage,' has been restored and authentically reconstructed with limited furniture of the period, a small kerosene refrigerator, a small wood burning stove, no running water or electricity, no carpet or wall linings, to illustrate just what life was like for these families after the war. Jim Moyle who cut the ribbon to officially open the hut lived in just such a hut with his wife and five children for six months. He remembers the cold more than the heat, sitting with his wife wrapped up 'with our feet in the oven to keep warm.'

The settlers hut can be seen during a visit to the Mooramong Homestead.

Top photograph shows from left a drenched; Ian Morton AM (Former Staff Driver rising to CEO of the Soldier Settlement Scheme), Ian Waller(National Trust Manager of Mooramong), Lewis Officer (Rural Finance Corporation) and Martin Purslow (CEO National Trust of Victoria)