3.3 Frankston and the Outside World

The First Roads

The main Melbourne Road was a simple bush track in the nineteenth century. Along it the Frankston Fish Company took wagons to the Melbourne Market, leaving in the middle of the night to reach the early morning market. Within town centres roads were graded in the 1880s and Frankston's main footpaths were asphalted in the 1890s.1 Street trees were acquired from Macedon Nursery and planted in streets during the 1880s.2 Along the back roads the worst quagmires and the roughest intersections were paved with strips of wattle bark, although the Shire Council battled to stop the many illegal strippings of trees by do-it-yourself road improvers.3