Water gushed for weeks before McCrae landslide destroyed a home, injured a council worker, inquiry told

Australia Broadcast Center

07-05-2025

Excess water gushed through the streets of a wealthy Mornington Peninsula neighbourhood for weeks before a disastrous landslide destroyed a luxury holiday home, an inquiry has heard.
Alongside the collapse of the multimillion-dollar house, the January 14 disaster seriously injured a council worker and prompted several evacuations amid serious questions about the viability of neighbouring homes.
Residents in eight of the hillside homes still have not been cleared to return.
Aerial photos of McCrae reveal the damage from the 2025 landslide.
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Geotechnical experts, residents and local authorities are set to give evidence in an inquiry that began in Melbourne today.
In an opening address, counsel assisting Mark Costello revealed one avenue of enquiry was whether a potentially significant water leak could have saturated the escarpment beneath the homes.
"In the months before the landslide, approximately from mid-November, local residents observed excess water in the streets uphill of Penny Lane [where the home was destroyed]," he said.
"The water, we have been told, roared in the stormwater drainage system.
"It emerged through the roads. It pushed up and cracked the asphalt.
"It created potholes. It flowed down the streets. It saturated nature strips. And it leaked into the curbs."
A "constant flow" of water was also observed emerging from a section of escarpment affected by a smaller landslide about a week before the one that toppled the home, he said.
The inquiry will look at whether a burst main that saw water gushing down McCrae streets caused the landslide.
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When two residents looked into the issue, their investigations led them to a water main that seemed to have saturated the surrounding area before it was repaired at about the start of the year, Mr Costello said.
He told the inquiry the residents sought more information from the Mornington Peninsula Shire council and water authority South East Water, but did not receive what he called "substantive responses".
Five avenues of enquiry to be probed
The so-called "burst water main theory" is one of five avenues of enquiry to be probed as the Board of Inquiry looks into what caused the January disaster and how to prevent a repeat.
The adequacy of the area's stormwater infrastructure as well as its natural underground springs were flagged as two other water-related potential causes.
A week before the January landslide, a smaller slip also badly damaged the home that was later destroyed.
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Then there was the role of building works, like the installation of a retaining wall at an uphill property, as well as vegetation removal, which the property owners said was limited to the removal of dead plants and some trimmings at the request of a neighbour.
"We have formed no view as to whether any of these matters contributed to the landslide," Mr Costello said.
"But both matters are at least capable of having contributed to the landslide in that they could assist in creating the conditions necessary for a landslide to occur, even if they were not causal."
In 1952, eight homes were destroyed in a landslide triggered by significant rainfall about two kilometres from the McCrae site, the inquiry heard.
The three-storey house impacted at least two other houses when it slid down the hill.
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About 80 millimetres of rain — the most recorded in single day in more than a decade — fell before two smaller landslides occurred near the site in November 2022, prompting the evacuation of three homes.
A week before January's disastrous landslide, a smaller event also badly damaged the home that was later destroyed while two people were home, the inquiry heard.
Despite this history, the inquiry heard the relevant area was not subject to an erosion management overlay, a planning tool that can place stricter regulations on development on affected lands.
Led by senior lawyer Renee Enbom, the inquiry has summoned troves of documents and pored over more than 30 submissions, as well as visited the affected region and its residents.
Ms Enbom vowed to deliver her findings as quickly as possible.
"It is time to find the answers to the important questions being asked by the McCrae community,"
she said.
"I'm determined to make recommendations as quickly as possible as to the measures that need to be taken to prevent or mitigate the risk of another landslide."
The hearing will continue over the coming weeks.