Recommendations and Guidelines

Study Introduction

Today Frankston's many historical layers are not obvious. Few could visualise it as once a squatter's run, with native scrub cover and cultivated grasslands interrupted by only a few buildings. Even its later development stages, such as that of a semi-rural seaside resort town, are now obscured by its more recent role as a major district commercial centre and a suburban extension of Melbourne.

However, often concealed among the spread of modern construction, are sign posts to these various stages of the city's history. Many development eras have also served to create a built environment which, unlike for example Melbourne's inner suburbs, is diverse in period, form and finish. Often there is no visual or heritage relationship between adjacent buildings except perhaps that which derives from a common use ie. quarter acre block detached housing or commercial/retail ship development. Hence, this report deals mainly with individual sites and during its production only three potential built heritage areas (Grimwade - St. Mirins groups at Baxter, The Pines Housing Commission Estate and the Gulls Way/Yamala area) were assessed.

None of these areas was recommended for preservation as such but their components were. The resort nature of Frankston means that many of the individual sites are well spaced and surrounded with a combination of indigenous and exotic landscape. Only in Gulls Way is there a built theme which is readily visible from the street. Landscape still plays a role in the city but with the following development only part of the Seaford foreshore and Kananook still remind us of the early post cards which promoted Frankston as an idyllic bush seaside retreat.1 Scenes showing the Fairy Park (once near the pier) and Lovers Walk (Seaford) show how much coastal vegetation has been lost for use as carparks, access roads and expansion of recreational buildings. Slowly the Frankston foreshore has become paved with some balance being achieved by revegetation south of the jetty and plant preservation on the Seaford foreshore. The Kananook Creek, with its rustic bridges and planted banks, has been long a part resort character of Frankston and still provides landscape dose to the city's centre, albeit with a recent cosmetic face lift. Golf courses, of which Frankston has many, are also areas where some of the past landscape, has been retained or recreated.2

Contrasting with these surviving belts of leptospermum sp. and other native planting, are the rows of conifers, mainly Monterey cypress and pines (ie. Gulls Way), which characterise Frankston's residential growth, aided by better car access post First War. Even in the main street of Frankstn,3 a row of cypress survives on a plantation which has seen many different landscape treatments since the palms, shrubs and encircling rockery were shown there early this century.4 Cypress and pine rows were also planted as privacy hedge belts for the large properties such as Rubra and their survival in part is also a reminder of the large size of the original holdings.

Currently there is a blend of native and exotic public landscape throughout the city with a few streets such as Bembridge Avenue, Gulls Way and Harleston Road being outstanding as successfully integrating both streams of planting and retaining the gravelled road surface as an allusion to the area's early state. Private gardens in this street blend with public in a seemingly natural manner.

The development of private gardens has also been aided by the large initial areas of many properties also the backdrop of native planting and the nearby water enhances each garden setting. Gardens such as Marathon, an Italian garden of national significance, are rare but other more recent gardens gain much from the blend of native and exotic (ie. White Lodge).

Because the heritage of Frankston is largely based on the retention of individual properties rather than areas, its conservation is in the hands of a relatively small number of rate payers, compared to conserved areas such as Carlton and Parkville. Hence any conservation policies or support for owners has to be focused on what benefits the city can bestow on owners in return for their continued maintenance of the city's heritage. Many long-term Frankston residents already understand and value the city's heritage. However Mt. Eliza, for example, as a high prestige area, has attracted increasingly denser residential developments which seek to capitalise on the area's reputation. The form of these developments do not always have the area's character in mind and can endanger the very reputation which initially attracted the developer. Similarly, new property owners may not have the same understanding of the area's attributes. Modest but comfortable seaside retreats, nestled into established landscape, can be replaced by large walled compounds. These buildings, because of their size, the reduced land size, and stark architecture, are readily seen above any mature planting which survives after the development has run its course.

The effect of development control which may consider traffic movement as its only fundamental consideration will be that the amenity of a residential area will suffer and with it property values. Today this is particularly obvious in Frankston's non-residential areas.