About Us

Children's indoor activities during the Sustainability Fair at Armagh.

Australia-Pacific Centre

A home for trust building and peace building in the region

The Australia-Pacific Centre for Initiatives of Change operates out of a 100-year house in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak. ‘Armagh’, once the home of the Cecil McKay family, was gifted to Initiatives of Change in 1956 to use as a base for our work. The building is a residence, office premises for Melbourne-based staff, and a platform for community-based programs, initiatives and events.

If walls could talk...

Australian Indigenous leader Geoffrey Shannon from Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, presents a painting by his wife to Rob Wood and Jabez Phillpot for the ‘Armagh’ community.

Armagh has a special link with Indigenous Australia, as many people in the IofC Australia network, past and present, have worked in or closely with First Nations communities. It stands on the land of the Wurundjeri nation, to whose elders we pay our respects.

Over the years, Armagh has been the place where, for example, South Sudanese diaspora groups have convened across tribal boundaries and where Cambodian and Vietnamese youth have jointly organized meetings amongst many more community gatherings.

Depending on the time of year, visitors to Armagh may find children playing in the garden, asylum seekers cooking food in our catering kitchen, a meditation group sitting in silence, or workshops and programs under way! The building itself has played a role in many meetings as a warm and intimate venue for IofC’s mission of ‘building trust across the world’s divides.’ 

A platform for peace

In keeping with IofC’s mission of trust building, we also open Armagh for use by other groups with similar or complementary aims. You may be a community-based organization, an industry body, an NGO, or even just a group of friends with a common purpose. Talk to us if you’d like to use the Armagh Ballroom for your next meeting or event. We apply a sliding scale of user fees.

Armagh offers many inviting and peaceful spaces for meetings, quiet reflection, dinners, music concerts, film screenings and celebrations. A large ballroom and associated meeting and reception rooms may be accessed in various combinations or as part of a whole package. 

Contact us and let us know a bit about who you are. See photos of Armagh’s spaces for use here.