Environmental History of Frankston City

Introduction

Frankston: The Mediterranean of the Southern Hemisphere

1 Olivers Hill and the new road which meant the end of isolation from Melbourne, 1913 (Jones, p. 152)

In 1921 an anonymous author in the Frankston Standard wrote about the "idealistic solitude of Davey's Bay."

Away from the hustling crowds and the hum-drum of city life, away from the shrill and far-reaching echoes of the Hedald (sic.) boy ... lies Davey's Bay, the Mediterranean of the Southern Hemisphere.1

This article followed after a series in the Frankston newspaper identifying local "beauty spots."2 About the same time a promotional film "Beautiful Frankston" was shown in Melbourne picturing scenes of Seaford's "perfect beach" and Frankston's "rocky coastline."3 The film and the beauty spots were extolled so as to draw wide attention to Frankston's marvellous "seascapes and landscapes" composed around the "fine residences of Mornington Road and the silvery placidness of the waters."

2 Vieto Oliver's Hill by James A. Turner, 1888, from the beach showing the rural bayside paradise which attracted many for years to come (Jones, plate, courtesy Christopher Day.)

Frankston was intent on promoting itself as a popular holiday resort and drawing crowds from Melbourne. And in promoting itself in this manner Frankston stressed the character of its coastline. The views, the beaches and the fine homes built to take advantage of sandy beachfront in Frankston or stunning bay views in Mt. Eliza were the prime assets of the district.

Since the 1920s when these images of the Mediterranean of the Southern Hemisphere were shaped, much in Frankston has changed. It is no longer a secluded beachside resort. It is now a major suburban centre and a stopping point for travellers to more popular resorts further down the bay. Yet even as the quiet holiday town has been overtaken by the more mundane functions of suburbia, Frankston retains a distinctive character. The changes from the 1920s onwards are in themselves significant. Indeed the descriptions of the charms of Davey's Bay coincided with a wave of new building in which summer residents built holiday homes shaped by some of the more advanced architectural ideas of the time. New suburban housing estates, changes in retailing techniques and buildings, the impact of the motor car on the townscape, in all of these Frankston sometimes reflected but more often showed the way to home builders and municipal planners throughout Victoria. And surviving within the character of the modern city there are important elements of an older Frankston. Frankston does have a distinctive environmental character.