1.2 Beach Buildings

The Pier

The first pier was apparently sited beneath Oliver's Hill, to the south of the present site; as late as 1960 its pylons could still be seen running in a broken line out into the bay. The present pier is thought to date from 1857 when a pier was recorded on this site but of shorter length than the present structure.

In 1863, possibly in the hope of attracting some maritime trade, the local residents petitioned the Public Works Department and asked that the pier be extended into deeper water.1

While it has remained a key physical feature of the Frankston waterfront it has not really played a major part in the commercial life of the suburb and has been mainly a focus for tourist activity.

4 Signs of fishing activity; frames erected on the beach probably to dry nets [Brody postcard, Armstrong collection, c1907]

During the 1880s the Frankston Brick Company prepared works on approaches to the jetty to ship out their products.2 At about that time a permanent light marked the end of the pier and a lamplighter was employed to make certain that the light was kept burning in both fine and foul weather.

The company's main interests were shipping out bricks and bringing in firewood from the jetty to their brick kilns on the foreshore. Wharfage rates in the 1880s were set by the customs department however there seemed to be little passenger or goods movement through Frankston pier. Old residents recalled that the most exciting visitor to the foreshore was Lord Brassey, who sailed around the world in 1876-7. His yacht Sunbeam tied up to the pier during his Port Phillip sojourn.

Other well-known users of the pier in its first decades were Thomas and James Wren who took fish up the bay and returned with food and manufactured goods for sale in Frankston. Yet as a stopping point for shipping up the bay or a place for which excursion steamers might bring crowds from Melbourne, the Frankston pier never really attracted great interest. There were more fashionable and more convenient destinations along the Mornington and the Bellarine Peninsulas.

Occasionally visitors hired fishing boats, but only after arriving in Frankston by train. The pier remains still the as the one single beachfront building visible front vantage points along the bay to the north and south of Frankston. But it appears to have never really attracted much interest for commercial use.

The railway naturally altered the way in which the pier was used. An old resident, David Kelly, of Young St had carted firewood in bullock wagons to the pier in the 1870s and 1880s.3

He traded in other goods brought down from Melbourne. In 1948, one of Frankston's oldest residents, Charlie Willcox, recalled that few passenger or goods steamers used the Frankston Pier. It was, he recalled, mainly a pleasant place for summer promenading.4 Once the railway arrived in Frankston it captured the little trade in goods taken to and from Frankston by boat. At the same time the railway brought Frankston closer to the Melbourne holiday trade. The summer visitors took to the pier as a place for a pleasant walk, visiting tea gardens or beachside stalls and kiosks on their way.

Yet without the interest of commercial users in its protection and following several storms, the pier became more and more dilapidated and from the turn of the century onwards, Frankston residents sought to find both new uses for the structure and to maintain its physical quality.

During the twentieth century the pier gradually deteriorated so that by the 1920s the local council was dismayed by the collapse of sections and asked the Public Works Department to carry out long-delayed repairs.

5 Kananook Creek channel entering the bay with the Frankston pier behind: today both elements are little changed but their surroundings are [Brody? Postcard from Frankston Historical Society, copy in Armstrong collection].

The Ports and Harbour Department rejected local appeals for a breakwater but agreed to continue with repair work to the existing pier.5 In the meantime the local council tried to have the pier gazetted as a passenger wharf (they were informed that there was no real need for this.)6 Repairs were not completed before the pier suffered further damage from storms in the 1930s.7 By then Frankston had an alternative place for fishing or promenading, at Seaford, where in 1929 engineers completed a pier as part of their works on the Kananook Creek.8 But sited less majestically and some distance from the commercial and residential centre of Frankston, it never had quite the appeal of the first pier.

Debate about the state of the pier continued beyond the Second World War when a new lot of day-trippers began arriving in Frankston, travelling by car and not the train. Most of these visitors took their ritual stroll along the pier. For others it had become a standard fishing spot and for the foolhardy a convenient diving tower. Despite local pleas for massive surgery on pylons and decking, the Public Works Department insisted in 1950 that the Frankston pier could be maintained with only minor work, but a year later the pier again suffered rapid deterioration.9 In 1951, the delayed repairs to Frankston Pier again caused a problem with a section of the pier coming adrift.10 The Ports and Harbours Department of the Public Works Ministry worked on the pier and in May 1952 the local paper congratulated the Ministry on its "fine job" in reconstructing the pier.11

The pier continued as a major attraction for holidaymakers and fishermen and eventually attracted boat-owners wanting to revive passenger services. In 1966 the Port Jackson and Manly Steamship Company were granted a three month trial for hydrofoil excursions from the pier. A concrete pad on the shore near the pier entrance was the site for the departures by hovercraft in the early 1980s. For a time, Flotilla Pty Ltd were running Argonaut pleasure cruises from the pier.12

Each summer paddle boats and surf-skis were rented from the shore around the pier. Where much else along the Frankston foreshore has disappeared, the pier survives as an evocative relic from Frankston's heyday as a tourist resort and still fulfils an important recreational role for residents and visitors alike. In its length, form and siting this pier distinguishes the Frankston foreshore from all those other expanses of sand and ti-tree which ring Port Phillip Bay. The pier is perhaps now more than ever before a key site for beachside recreation of all sorts and a key focal point for the maritime identity of Frankston.