3.3 Frankston and the Outside World

Conclusion

The motor car drew Frankston more completely into the orbit of Melbourne. House builders, retailing developers and civic planners could all rely on the car to bring new people to Frankston. Moving traffic became a central principal of much town planning during the 1950s and 1960s and since then plans for new freeways, new shopping malls and for additional housing estates all took their starting point in the centrality of the motor car.

Before 1945 only the wealthier residents of Frankston used cars to get to and from the city. Most visitors and residents travelled out of Frankston by train. The demands of the car has reshaped the commercial centre of Frankston and in doing so given the City some unusual buildings and landforms, principal amongst them the prototype supermarkets of Frankston. The demands for more roadspace cut into Frankston's parks and gardens. Nonetheless the high land along Davey Street with its civic buildings, churches and parks is still an important landscape, registering many of the changes which have been central to Frankston.

To the north, east and south of this civic centre spread the houses of Frankston. Like much of the rest of post-war suburbia Frankston has its share of repetitive building. At the same time it has estates which, for their era, were imaginatively planned, the Pines and Karingal Estates for example. On the heights of Oliver's Hill are many exciting works of the modern
school of architecture. Along the streets of Long Island and elsewhere near the waterfront are houses which register the new forms of holiday homes from the 1920s onwards. Further to the south at Mt. Eliza stand the holiday homes of Melbourne's select few. Some of these buildings are quite recent, a few date from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Mt. Eliza first became a convenient ex-urban retreat for Melbourne's most influential men and women.

Inland from the coast stand another group of houses. Amongst them, Westerfield is important as a home to another family of prominent residents and leaders in Melbourne's inter-war establishment. Furthermore this and nearby homes are significant for their combination of house and plantings, reflecting the agricultural and industrial as much as the social character of Frankston. Bounding the present city on the west is the coastline of Port Phillip Bay. A natural rather than a human dividing line, the bay beaches, Kananook Creek and the heights of Mt. Eliza and Oliver's Hill have always been central to the lives of Frankston people.

The bay distinguished Frankston from other suburbs and if the future buildings of the suburb become more like those in the rest of Melbourne and less innovative in their design, the shoreline will always distinguish Frankston. As a human environment, the coastline reflects generations of recreational users as well as the work of a few who tried to make a living from fishing or shipping. The piers, yacht clubs and the water management works along the Kananook Creek are central to Frankston's heritage. The new townships to the east -Skye, Carrum Downs, Langwarrin, and part of Baxter (but not Baxter township) now added to Frankston City Council, have brought new heritage areas into the municipality. They were linked closely with Frankston last century. However, the development patterns of these areas have been somewhat different. In these townships to the east, farming communities flourished over a longer period, so that elements of picturesque rural landscape and remnant farm buildings remain. Some of these buildings and plantings relate to the dairying and orcharding heritage of the district.

These eastern areas were not drawn into the seaside development of Frankston or the elite recreational character that distinguishes Mt. Eliza. However, two notable properties, Mulberry Hill at Baxter and Cruden Farm at Langwarrin, have links with the group of distinctive architect-designed homes of prominent residents and leaders in Melbourne's inter-war establishment, found elsewhere in the municipality.

A couple of large-scale sites on the east side of Frankston contribute unique qualities to the heritage of the municipality. The Langwarrin Military Reserve (now the Langwarrin Flora and Fauna Reserve) is of historical importance as one of the military establishments opened on the Mornington Peninsula last century. The Brotherhood of St. Laurence Settlement at Carrum Downs illustrates the attraction of such country areas, with strong transport links with the city, to welfare groups in the 1940s for the recreational and healthful environment they were thought to provide.

Not all the historical themes identified in this environmental history are reflected in individual sites. Some have left little in the way of physical structures. At the same time many of the apparently mundane elements of the suburban landscape come to have greater importance when interpreted in the light of the broad historical themes summarised here. This history is presented as an aid to the identification, interpretation and protection of such sites.