In Eltham, known as Nillumbik for thousands of years, meaning shallow roots / shallow earth. On the lands of the Wurundjeri-willam Custodians of the Kulin Nation.
Eltham always had a reputation for being Melbourne's creative suburb, and I used to find that kind of label slightly annoying. Something about the way a place gets flattened into a single narrative. But Montsalvat earns the name. There's a strange feeling about finding medieval stone halls tucked behind gum trees, mudbricks slowly returning to the earth, black cockatoos moving through pine canopies like they own the whole experiment.
Justus and Lily Jorgensen started building it in the 1930s as a working artists' village. Not a gallery, not a retreat, just a place where people actually lived and made things together. That distinction really matters. Nearly a hundred years later it still functions that way, studios occupied, exhibitions running, the same spaces holding new work.
What stays with me is how quietly it sits in the landscape. Ponds, gothic spires reflected back in still water, sculptures half-hidden, overtaken in greenery. It doesn't announce itself. It just persists, which feels like the most honest thing an artists' community can do.
Gateway near the entrance to Montsalvat
