1.2 Beach Buildings

Public and Community Buildings

The Frankston pier was the first of many buildings which drew people to the foreshore. Over the years, the beach, the ti-tree and creek banks have all attracted local clubs and societies looking for cheap and convenient sites for clubrooms. At other sites along the waterfront, Seaford, Davey's Bay and Canadian Bay, residents put up boat sheds, summer shelters and community buildings. In many ways the foreshore rather than any civic precinct has been the communal heart of Frankston, helping us understand why for so long the town lacked a town hall.1

6 Kananook Creek bending away from its entry to the bay flanked by dense native vegetation (now gone) [Brody postcard, Armstrong collection, c1905]

Frankston community groups saw the beachfront as a natural place for recreation and over the years erected, and demolished, a series of buildings. Most of these were built for a particular club or society and shaped along strictly utilitarian lines. During the nineteenth century brick kilns, shanties and shacks, boat sheds and some kiosks were dotted along the coastline at Frankston. Some order was brought to this array of buildings in 1910 when the foreshore was gazetted as a reserve for public recreation.2

In 1911 the waterfront at Frankston was placed under the control of the shire council. Apart from trying to collect fees from campers, the shire wanted to establish a network of paths from Seaford to Frankston and a series of shelter sheds and viewing points along the coast. There were plans for a more complete "beautification" of the foreshore, a scheme which was abandoned through disputes over funding. During the 1930s there were several debates locally and then with the Ministry of Public Works about how to manage the foreshore and about how much clearing of ti-tree could be carried out. Much of this argument centred on the problems over the Kananook Creek.3 At the same time several local recreational bodies saw the foreshore as a perfect site for clubhouses. From the 1930s onwards, clubrooms and their recreational users have gradually transformed the character of the Frankston foreshore, so that the wild expanse of ti-tree and sand which so attracted campers between the wars and the pleasant gardens and walkway near the Frankston commercial heart have all but disappeared. As a result, the surviving remnants of this landscape become of course more interesting as elements of local heritage.

7 LOVER'S WALK SEAFORD: the kind of secluded pathway once enjoyed by lovers at many seaside locations [postcard, Valentine series 1638, Armstrong collection, c1940].

In 1937 the Frankston Dinghy and Yacht Club commenced their new club rooms on the north side of Kananook Creek. Over the years other local societies followed them to the foreshore, looking for sites close to the commercial heart of Frankston and generally to the north side of the Frankston pier. The Surf Life Saving Club also asked council for permission to erect new club rooms near the creek mouth.4 Despite all the problems with the creek's silting and pollution, the creek-mouth attracted a series of users, many of them organised local societies able to call on volunteer labour to erect, alter and extend buildings. In 1955, for example, the Frankston Sea Scouts applied to build a club house on the banks of the Kananook Creek.5

8 Jetty at Davey's Bay showing the boatsheds and bathing boxes along the foreshore (now gone) and the informal type of beach house or Bungalow typical of the coastline prior to the encroachment of suburbia [Rose postcard P.3697, Armstrong collection, c1935].

Other buildings near the creek mouth included the new Surf Life Saving Clubhouse, built in 1959, a two-storey brick building largely constructed by local volunteer labour.6 The Sea Rangers had taken over an older beachfront building and extended it in 1954.7

Following these moves the local Anglers Club approached council wanting a new clubhouse. With 110 members they claimed that they had just as much right to a beachside home as any other local group.8 The coastguard building was for a time used by other local groups and stands near to what was once the site of the Frankston Bowling Club's green.

The Frankston Yacht club building is on a site which has been rebuilt several times, most recently in 1972. There is also an Elderly Citizens Clubrooms on the foreshore built in 1961.

The memories which visitors to Frankston have of the foreshore relate to the tea gardens and kiosks which traded during the summer months. At the entrance to the pier there used to be a 'fairy garden' with five or six small buildings with pyramidal roofs.9 Just one of these survives.

9 'Fairy Park', a complex consisting of a castle and small beach pavilions built at the pier entry, resembling Burley Griffin's Gumnuts (q.v.) with their mushroom-like form: one of these structures survives, albeit in a changed form. [photo from A.J. Veale collection held by Ian Armstrong].

After the Second World War several of the older waterfront sites vanished although along the foreshore some private boathouses survived in the gardens of homes abutting the beachfront (off Gould Street, Long Island). In 1960 the older jetty piers were removed from below Oliver's Hill in cleaning up the general beachfront environment.10

Probably more significant than these clubhouses were the bathing boxes. These were once familiar in many Port Phillip Bayside municipalities including Frankston. In the later nineteenth century these bathing boxes were sited at the foot of Oliver's Hill near to the enclosed Frankston baths. When bathers took to swimming in the sea outside the confined baths they often requested bathing boxes for private use. The last of these structures still survives on the Long Island beach with isolated boxes on Davey's and Canadian Bays. The popularity of bathing boxes declined during the middle years of the twentieth century so that in 1947 the local newspaper decried the "falling-down condition" of Frankston bathing boxes.

Frankston had some of the best beaches in Victoria but these were being ruined claimed the paper because council failed to enforce local regulations for bathing boxes.11 Foreshore structures did seem to deteriorate after World War II, amongst them the bathing boxes. In 1955, Palmer's Boatshed was beginning to collapse and in the same year the wall of the Frankston High School boat shed was blown down.12

Several owners lost interest in keeping up their bathing boxes. At Oliver's Hill, the council wanted to "beautify" the view and found that the collection of old boxes and remnants of piers and baths detracted from the beauty of the suburb's most scenic spot.13

Over the next few years council cancelled several bathing box leases and the foreshore committee began demanding minimum sizes and set building standards for any new bathing boxes.14 Under regulations proposed in 1958, bathing boxes could not be smaller in floor area than 25 by 15 feet and had to have brickwork of four and a half inches thickness. The foundations were to be of reinforced concrete with piers sunk to six feet and with entrance heights etc. regulated. Moreover to cut down on demand, lessees had to be Frankston ratepayers.15 The regulations also required the boxes to be all of brick or concrete and to have fire proof fittings as well as approved form of access ramps.16

From 1959 onwards the Foreshore Committee began to serve notice on owners of decaying wooden bathing boxes and removed most of the older-style boxes from the beachfront.17 Some of these survive on Long Island Beach at the north end of a long line of more recent boxes.

Elsewhere leases were granted to residents wanting bathing boxes or boat sheds at some of the more isolated beaches, Davey's Bay for example. But complaints from nearby residents who feared that their access to the beaches would be obstructed reduced the number of such leases.18