Custom Permalink broke Home Page (but not site) since 4.5

Updated the site as soon as 4.5.1 was available

When I updated to 4.5 the home page stopped loading; suspected issue with theme or plugins. Disabled (and in some cases – deleted the plugin) – no change.

Only thing that worked was changing permalink structure to standard ‘id’ based link from my original custom permalink –

/%year%/%category%/%postname%/

I have since found out that I can have this custom permalink, and all other pages load fine (provided you know the links) – just the homepage loops indefinitely; It was all working fine prior to update.

Note: It doesn’t matter what the custom permalink structure is; homepage refuses to load.

Working Page: https://monash.edu/science-education/category/resources/
Broken Homepage: https://monash.edu/science-education/

Any thoughts?