Cliff collapse destroys multimillion-dollar house on Mornington Peninsula, experts to assess risks

The cliff-side which collapsed destroying a multimillion-dollar house on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula on Tuesday will be inspected by geotechnical experts as closures remain in place, Sunrise has reported.

The $2 million property on Penny Lane at McCrae collapsed shortly before 9am, falling about 50m onto the street below.

A council worker was forced to leap from the balcony and was taken to hospital with lower body injuries.

It’s understood he was inspecting the property at the time after another slip on the cliff-side just over a week ago.

The man was standing on a second-storey balcony when the cliff face gave way, forcing him to jump for safety.

There are now fears nearby houses could also collapse on the cliffside with residents evacuated by Victorian SES personnel.

“Geotechnical experts are what they’re waiting for this morning. They will be assessing this morning. They will be assessing this cliff face here behind me, excavating it to make sure that there aren’t any further risks of landslide,” Sunrise reporter Teegan Dolling said.

“So, Point Nepean Rd will remain closed for some time. It is still not known when those residents like the gentleman we just spoke to will be able to get back into their homes.”

Dolling went on to explain the collapse.

“It’s a three-storey multimillion-dollar house here behind me. You can’t see at the moment, it is still dark. It has literally slipped and fallen 50m down this cliff face onto a block of units,” Dolling said.

“As you said, the council worker was actually there to inspect the house because just last week there was another (smaller) landslide in this area, when there was a family inside the home.

“Thank goodness it didn’t happen to that extent last week ... now, that council worker was able to jump to safety. The man who was actually in the units below, he, incredibly, was OK too. He ran up to render first aid.

“This morning, it’s still a lockdown here on the Point Nepean Road. This will remain closed for some time because they are worried about more landslides. There are around 12 homes evacuated,” Dolling said.

“They need to get a geotechnical expert out here to make sure it is safe ... one of the things they will be looking at is obviously the drainage in the area, because a lot of residents say there has been issues with drainage.

“They believe that that could have been why there has been landslides. There was another one back here in 2022, following a big deluge of rain. We know we had a lot of rain come through on Sunday.

“That will form part of the investigation, but this area will be shut down for some time.”

Heavy rainfall caused a major landslide in the area in November 2022.

Since then, it’s understood council has installed stormwater drains at the top of the hill.

However, instead of fixing the problem, locals told 7NEWS the water had just been redirected and that another major landslide was bound to happen.

“I’ve seen a lot of water bubbling out of the concrete and it’s slowly been coming out from under our house,” Simon Borghesi said.

“It’s completely saturated the ground beneath, there’s nowhere for it to go. This whole land is just so unstable.

“It seems like anywhere can just go at any point.”

Borghesi said he had a close call on Monday when his veggie patch suddenly disappeared.

“Mum was out there picking some zucchinis, then 20 minutes later it was gone,” he said.

“It’s just a big hole where it used to be vegetation.

“We are lucky so far no one has been killed.”

When asked why the council worker was on the balcony when the home was known to be unstable, Mornington Peninsula Mayor Anthony Marsh said he didn’t know.

He also couldn’t answer when asked if the council had redirected storm water on nearby Viewpoint Rd.

“We had a geotechnical engineer come out and assess the site 24 or 48 hours after (the slip) and prepare a report and the site was deemed unsafe,” Marsh told AAP.

“Since then, we’ve spoken to the owners and to the insurers to list issues and have notified recommendations, and over the past sort of week, our staff have been there regularly, just doing investigations about the site.

“But had we not seen that, who knows what could have happened.”