1.5 Holiday Frankston: Guest Houses And Fishing

As a Victorian seaside resort Frankston attracted sedate holidaymakers who stayed in guest houses. Only with the railway and then the motor car did this pattern of holiday-making make way and beach began to attract more and more day-trippers. Over the years Frankston remained popular amongst fishing parties who often went out in boats rather than fishing from the shore. To fishing groups and other visitors, Mark Young's Pier Hotel was for many years the most familiar landmark on the foreshore at Frankston.

The hotel was thought to have been initially built from pieces of a prefabricated building brought to Victoria from the Isle of Jersey. Over the years it has been added to and altered although the original skeleton of a fashionable resort may still survive encased within more recent additions.1 The many guest-houses in Frankston drew regular crowds between the wars and beyond, although by the 1950s their numbers were reduced. Amongst the popular places were the Clendon Guesthouse, Osborne House [beach side of Nepean Highway] and Frankston House [corner of Bay and Playne Streets], Fernlea [on Oliver's Hill] and Sunnyside [Bay Street].

Visitors to these places amused themselves by a day at the beach and nearby tea gardens or for the more energetic a favourite outing was a walk from the guest houses to the Old Dutch Windmill where afternoon teas were served by a pulley lift system as the visitors enjoyed the wonderful view across the bay.2 The Summer Tea Gardens were another famous spot well-known in Melbourne and locally but now vanished.3

Holiday makers sometimes rented boats although during the nineteenth century but at one inquiry in the 1890s local fishermen found little cause to keep crews on for renting. Fishermen sold their catch to the Frankston Fish Company for sale at the Victoria Market in the nineteenth century. Their numbers remained small and agriculture was always a far more important industry. During the 1930s depression fishing received a boost with men fishing along the shore and with a few professional fishermen working out of Kananook Creek. However casual holiday fishing was more significant than professional fishing and in the long run camping and day-trippers outnumbered the visitors staying in Frankston guest houses or bungalows.