Port Melbourne features three distinctive localities, with identities separated from the main section of the neighbourhood.
Garden City Garden City is a locality within Port Melbourne and the City of Port Phillip. It started in the 1920s as a planned "garden suburb", similar to those built in Britain a few years earlier during the
Garden City Movement. The early development was built as low-cost housing by the
State Bank, with later additions of public housing by the
Housing Commission of Victoria. It comprises semi-attached single and double-storey houses arranged around a series of public open spaces, in a distorted
Beaux-Arts layout. Contrary to popular belief, the "Bank Houses" were never public housing and have always been in private hands. The "Bank Houses" area later became known as "nobs hill", a reference to relative wealth of their occupants compared to the residents of the clinker brick public housing that was added later. The Housing Commission area was known as 'Little Baghdad'. The Garden City post office in Centre Avenue has been open since 1945. ()
Beacon Cove and Beacon Cove development in Port Melbourne
Beacon Cove is a locality within Port Melbourne and the
City of Port Phillip. It comprises approximately 1100 dwellings in a mixture of low-rise medium density and high-rise housing, with a small supermarket, some commercial space, a small number of
cafes and
restaurants and a leisure complex including a gym, swimming pool and tennis courts. It was developed over the decade from 1996 by Australian developer Mirvac, following the collapse of the "Sandridge City" scheme for a
gated community featuring canalside housing. The site was formerly an industrial facility. Beacon Cove features a waterfront promenade, palm-lined boulevards and a layout that allows the retention of two operational shipping beacons. Most of the low-rise housing is arranged around a series of small parks, in a postmodern scaled-down Beaux-Arts plan, similar in layout to nearby
St Vincent Gardens in Albert Park. Along the foreshore is a series of 11–14-storey high-rise apartment towers with a small amount of very upmarket low-rise housing at the western end, directly fronting Sandridge Beach. The layout re-routed Beach Street away from the foreshore and the apartments along the waterfront have direct access to the promenade. The development was completed in stages, working west from Princes Street, and this is reflected in the different styles of architecture. As of 2013 the owner of the leisure complex has proposed replacing it with a 19-storey apartment complex, and the
City of Port Phillip has instead proposed rezoning the site for mixed use with a 10-storey height limit. A number of community groups oppose both proposals.
Fishermans Bend Fishermans Bend (formerly Fishermen's Bend) is a locality within Port Melbourne and the City of Melbourne. It is positioned immediately to the east of the West Gate Bridge, on the south bank of the Yarra River, adjacent to the suburb of Port Melbourne and opposite
Coode Island, on the north shore of the Yarra River. Fishermans Bend originally included the area now known as Garden City, which was renamed in 1929. From the 1850s, the site was a location for Bay fishermen of European descent. Some thirty families lived on the Bend, frequently finding additional work in the docks and cargo ships;
ballast was loaded onto ships returning to Europe. Habitation was in rough shacks along the Bend, made from
corrugated iron, flattened
kerosene tins or wood. There were no
roads,
shops, or
sewerage. Water was collected from hanging out sail canvases, and stored in iron tanks or casks milk came from a nearby farm. Fishing continues on the Bay, but today only two fishing licences belong to descendants of these early pioneer settlers. The last remaining shack on the Bend was demolished in 1970, to make way for
Webb Dock. The new
Surf Life Saving Club headquarters stand on the site (Meiers 2006). The neighbourhood of Fishermans Bend also has a significant place in Australian aviation history, being the home of several prominent historical Australian aircraft design and manufacturing companies, including the
Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation,
Holden,
Smorgon Steel,
Government Aircraft Factories, the
Aeronautical Research Laboratory and regional facilities for
Boeing.
Fishermen's Bend Aerodrome remained in use until 1957. Fishermans Bend is a primary industrial centre at the foot of the West Gate Bridge and contains major establishments for the
Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Holden,
Hawker de Havilland, GKN Aerospace Engineering Services, the
Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures,
Kraft Foods,
Toyota Australia, port security and a campus of
RMIT University. It also has a
marina, known as d'Albora Marinas Pier 35, and several
container ship ports. Fishermans Bend has a single large reserve known as
Westgate Park, a large artificial
wetland established in 1985. ==Notable people==