A man who stabbed his partner 55 times and tried to hide the murder by setting fire to their Ballarat home has been jailed for 29 years.

Scott Charles Cameron had been in a relationship with Dannyll Goodsell for three months when on October 5, 2018 he arrived at their home in the suburb of Mount Pleasant about 5am and stabbed her to the face, head, neck and arms with a kitchen knife.

Ms Goodsell, a 33-year-old mother of two, separately told four friends she was fearful of Cameron in the 16 hours before she died, the Supreme Court heard on Friday. About 10 minutes before the attack she sent a friend a text message which read, "I am scared of Scott."

Justice Andrew Tinney said Cameron viciously and repeatedly stabbed a defenceless woman and then displayed a callous disregard for her by hiding her body under a bed, lighting a fire in the house and going to a friend's house. Firefighters discovered Ms Goodsell's body in a smouldering house after the fire failed to catch.