Houses and Holidays

Wave One: The Fishing Village

In 1865 Balliere's Guide listed Frankston as having only thirty people. The other local settlements, Baxter, Langwarrin, Somerville and Hastings were even smaller. By 1891 the Shire population had risen to more than three thousand and that of Frankston to nearly eight hundred in 160 houses.1

Recalling life in the rough cottages of Frankston at the turn of the century, one resident remembered that "the little house we had was just really one long room and it was divided into three by hessian walls."2 There were some larger and more permanent houses scattered through Frankston. Well into the twentieth century, the summer tourist trade created several larger boarding houses in the town of Frankston.

In the 1930s for example the Clendon Guest House took in twenty summer boarders (many of them from Gippsland or the inner Melbourne bayside)3 Frankston House, The Fernery and Osborne House were other popular guest houses which still attracted summer visitors until quite recently.

More often the holiday and temporary homes built during the early twentieth century were small and thrown together from odd materials. Many had only hessian dividing walls, no proper toilet (most holiday makers were slow to put in septic tanks) and a rudimentary kitchen (often cooking was done on an open verandah). Even the smallest cottages were often rented out to several families.

So acute was the summer housing shortage after the First World War that one local estate agent (J. Robertson of Robertson and Stephens) pointed out that, "we have not a house vacant for the holidays, we could let fifty more if we had them."4 Houses and bungalows let by the week had become overcrowded and the Royal Commission on Housing heard evidence from the local police inspector that the "construction of houses and bungalows of recent structure is very poor and in my opinion far too small."5 Part of the problem lay in the failure to enforce building by-laws and the speed with which owners put up shacks and let them, even before any notice was given to council's building inspector. Constable McCormack informed the Royal Commission on Housing that

As soon as they get the places up on this small block they place it in the hands of the agents for disposal. On that account there are a lot of unsightly little houses around the town. The by-law if enforced would prevent congestion.6

For the remaining years between the wars, Frankston struggled with the problem of controlling small bungalow building, preventing these being converted for permanent residency and tent camps clustered around half-built bungalows in often unsanitary surrounds. The problems were felt most acutely in the northern half of the Shire and around Seaford many small shacks went up in the ti-tree.

In 1936 as a result, the Seaford Progress Association approached council asking for the building by-law to be enforced strictly. Many of the buildings were, according to Councillor Klauer, "a disgrace to Frankston". Other Councillors were slow to suggest that regulations ought to be tightly enforced. As Councillor Armstrong reminded his fellow councillors, it was "a difficult thing to prevent a man doing what he wished to his own property."7