Step into Moe Library Forecourt and choose what to follow. Turn towards the library and enter a world of books, Council services and local history. Stay outside and trace the skate park's lines as the concrete moves through street zones, a quarter-pipe and a bowl that drops three metres. Beside the civic precinct, the railway carries the longest line through Moe.

Inside, the pace changes. Books and study spaces sit with meeting rooms, local-history research and the everyday work of Council. During Open House Latrobe, staff lead you further into the building and the work that happens there.

Open House Latrobe campaign banner announcing 9 to 11 October beside an architectural collage.Visit Open House Latrobe

Come back into the forecourt and follow another line. Cross the precinct paths. Trace the shaped surfaces where wheels find their way through the skate park. Then carry the line outward along the railway and across Gippsland.

People planned these movements into the centre of Moe. In 2009, the team behind the Moe Rail Precinct master plan placed a civic hub, public plaza, library and pedestrian connections beside the railway. The Frank Bartlett Memorial Library and Moe Service Centre opened in June 2016, giving the plan a building where people could read, study, meet, research and reach Council services.

Architects at fjmt shaped those functions into the library and service centre. The building later received the Australian Institute of Architects' Walter Burley Griffin Award for Urban Design. The recognition belongs to a design whose real work happens at human scale: someone arrives with a question, joins a meeting, opens a book or follows a piece of local history into the research area.

Outside, landscape architects TCL and Enlocus carried the precinct into another stage. They shaped places for beginners, intermediate skaters and experienced riders, along with a playground, event lawn, seating and communal spaces. A beginner can find a first line through the street zone. A rider with more experience can carry speed towards the bowl or quarter-pipe. The design gives each person a way to enter the same landscape through their own movement.

The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects recognised that work with a 2024 Victorian Regional Achievement Award in Civic Landscape. By then, the railway edge had become a place where movement could mean a train journey, a walk through the civic centre, a turn on a skateboard, time on the playground or a pause on the event lawn.

Open House Latrobe adds live performance to the sequence. Blaike Murphy brings the Gippsland garage-rock project CHEAP-SKATE into the Moe Library Forecourt. The performance places music within the same civic setting as library tours, local research, skating and the rail-precinct walk.

Rail precinct · library · civic life

Moe in motion

A cyclist moves over a concrete rise at Moe Skatepark while other riders wait nearby.
The skatepark turns the rail precinct into a place for movement and shared practice. Photo: Webster Cao, Latrobe City Council · Source: Open House Latrobe
Children ride scooters and bicycles through the concrete bowls of Moe Skatepark.
Young riders choose their own lines through the skatepark. Photo: Webster Cao, Latrobe City Council · Source: Open House Latrobe
People gather beneath the angular shelter beside Moe Skatepark and the railway precinct.
Shelter and open ground give people room to pause beside the movement. Photo: Webster Cao, Latrobe City Council · Source: Open House Latrobe
The illuminated Frank Bartlett Memorial Library and Moe Service Centre beside the street at dusk.
The library and service centre turns towards Moe's civic forecourt. Photo: John Gollings, courtesy of fjc studio · Source: Open House Latrobe
The Frank Bartlett Memorial Library's curved interior with bookshelves, reading tables and a timber ceiling.
Inside, the library gathers reading, learning and civic service beneath one sweeping ceiling. Photo: John Gollings, courtesy of fjc studio · Source: Open House Latrobe

You can enter this part of Moe through any one of those activities. Follow the architecture and the precinct becomes a story about planning. Follow the skate lines and it becomes a story about balance, practice and control. Follow the performance and a public forecourt becomes a place where local music can take up space.

The movement changes at Moe Fire Station.

Here, movement serves readiness. Moe Fire Brigade volunteers train, maintain equipment and build the working relationships that allow a brigade to respond. The station holds a turnout room, workshop, meeting room, kitchen, offices and amenities around its motor room and rear training area. Each space supports the people who prepare, practise and care for the equipment.

The brigade was established in 1936. Its current station opened in November 2023, keeping the brigade in the heart of Moe while giving volunteers a new place to work together. During Open House Latrobe, visitors can enter the station, see appliances and firefighting displays, and speak with the people who carry that responsibility.

A fire station asks you to look at ordinary preparation. Volunteers check and maintain vehicles and equipment so they are ready for response. Skills become dependable through training. The public moment during Open House rests on work repeated long before anyone walks through the door.

A building can move too.

At Old Gippstown, whole pieces of Gippsland have travelled from their original settings into an open-air heritage place. Bushy Park, Loren Iron House and Yallourn House stand among the buildings and collections cared for there. Their rooms bring earlier homes, work and community life within reach of people walking through them now.

People moved each building and continued caring for it. Volunteers and custodians keep the structures and collections available to visitors. During Open House, selected building tours and broader access give people a way to follow those stories through actual rooms and objects.

Service · readiness · memory

Moe at work

Moe Fire Station with two red fire appliances visible through the open motor-room doors.
At Moe Fire Station, movement begins with readiness. Photo: Liam Bantock · Source: Open House Latrobe
Firefighters stand beside a red CFA fire appliance inside Moe Fire Station.
People, vehicles and equipment come together inside the station. Photo: Liam Bantock · Source: Open House Latrobe
Red CFA fire appliances are parked in the motor room at Moe Fire Station.
The motor room keeps the station's response vehicles ready. Photo: Liam Bantock · Source: Open House Latrobe
Protective clothing and helmets are arranged in readiness inside Moe Fire Station.
Protective equipment waits beside the station's working spaces. Photo: Liam Bantock · Source: Open House Latrobe
A weatherboard house from Yallourn stands within Old Gippstown Heritage Park.
A Yallourn house begins another chapter at Old Gippstown. Photo courtesy of Old Gippstown Heritage Park · Source: Open House Latrobe
The corrugated-iron Loren house stands among trees at Old Gippstown Heritage Park.
The Loren iron house carries a domestic history into the heritage park. Photo courtesy of Old Gippstown Heritage Park · Source: Open House Latrobe
Bushy Park Homestead's timber verandah and garden at Old Gippstown Heritage Park.
Bushy Park Homestead opens onto its verandah and garden. Photo courtesy of Old Gippstown Heritage Park · Source: Open House Latrobe
Old Gippstown's main street, with timber shopfronts and a corrugated-iron building beneath a leafy tree.
Buildings from across Gippsland meet again along Old Gippstown's main street. Photo courtesy of Old Gippstown Heritage Park · Source: Open House Latrobe

The five Moe entries move at different speeds. The railway connects towns. The library carries knowledge between people. A skateboarder finds a line through concrete. A performer turns a forecourt into a place to listen. Firefighters prepare for the moment a vehicle must leave the station. At Old Gippstown, buildings that crossed the region hold their doors open again.

Together, they bring you into Moe through action. People planned the precinct, designed the buildings and landscapes, fitted out the rooms, practised skills, maintained equipment, made music and preserved physical pieces of Gippsland. The places make that work visible.

Open the current Open House Latrobe program and choose your first doorway. Begin with a book, a board, a rail-precinct walk, a fire appliance or a relocated building. Each choice carries you into a different part of the town's public life.

One place opens onto the next. Moe moves, and for a while, you move with it.

Open House Latrobe social tile inviting people to volunteer from 9 to 11 October.
Volunteer with Open House Latrobe

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