The beach – and its enjoyment thereof – is considered today by many Melburnians and Australians alike as something of a birthright. Unlike countries where shore access is a privilege, or where it comprises entirely of grey pebbles – Australia is a country bordered by glorious beaches on all sides, encircling a populace in which the raffish spirit which sent it there in the first place remains defiantly remnant. Borne from this propensity for uninhibited seaside frivolity a unique culture has emerged – in the sense of both ‘lifestyle’ and artistic enterprise – which has characterised the Australian way of life; its myths, legends and spirit; just as much as that other iconic site of Australian cultural definition: the bush.

The idea of having a good time at the beach is relatively new. A mere century before Frankston’s finest, beach rockers Australian Crawl (Melbourne’s answer to The Beach Boys), cut their first vinyl, the Mornington Peninsula was better known as a playground to the Melbourne’s social elite, seeking respite from the city’s intolerable heat, dust and working classes. Among the first such was Victoria’s first Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe, who established a Summer retreat at Queenscliff.

The health-giving properties of seawater and sea air were well documented in nineteenth century literature. Beachside resorts were prescribed by medics and were attributed specific healing properties. Mornington’s climate, for instance, was recommended for ‘obstetric diseases and children’s ailments’, whereas Lorne was approved for ‘phthisis, asthma and liver complaints’, while Queenscliff was said to benefit those with ‘nervous afflictions and convalescents’.

Moreover, the beach in the nineteenth century had little association with today’s brazen forms of recreation – a beachside holiday was a very serious business, centred on the improvement of the mind and body, and the demonstration of class and status. The first such resorts to flourish were at Sorrento, Queenscliff and Lorne. Beach culture was a concept imported almost entirely from England, from whence many Melbourne resorts took their names, such as Brighton and Torquay. It was a culture composed of promenades and genteel tea parties where dips in the ocean where literally that – in full neck to knee bathing costume, enmeshed in a horse-drawn bathing machine.

The increasing presence of the working classes at these resorts at the century’s turn brought with it the notion of the beachside carnival. Luna Park was established at St Kilda in 1904, with similar amusements offered throughout the bay. The days of beachside exclusivity were over. Flesh came to flourish, in spite of the archaic swimming regulations such as those of the Town of Brighton of 1912, which stipulated that ‘No person shall dress or undress or remove any part of his bathing costume in any place open to the public view’- and further that ‘No person clothed in a bathing costume shall sit, lie, loiter on, play games on, or run along the beach or seashore, but shall proceed in a direct line to and from the dressing place’.

The popularity of the Sea Baths, developed in the 1800s for curative purposes, burgeoned in the twentieth century. A common sight along the bay (until the famous storm of 1934 which blew most of them away) the Sea Baths offered an enclosed jetty and, in many cases, hot baths, where the invigorating properties of sea water could be fully experienced. Similarly, since 1860 Melbourne has been home to, at one point, over 2,000 individual Bathing Boxes (until the storm of ‘34). Today these brightly painted timber booths survive in smaller numbers along Brighton Beach.

The colour, gaiety and, indeed, sexual hedonism of the beach has inspired generations of Melbourne artists. The group of wilfully nude male youths, testing the waters on a remote bayside beach in Tom Roberts’ iconic The Sunny South, c.1887 reappear in Sidney Nolan’s Bathers of 1943, albeit now set at the St Kilda Baths. Albert Tucker’s St Kilda beach paintings of the same period reveal the menace and seediness that had come to define that suburb. More recently Scott Redford’s work Surf painting / SURF, 2004 marries the appeal of surf board aesthetics with the luminosity of Rothko’s Abstract Expressionism, while Matthew Sleeth’s Rosebud Series of 2003-04 reveals the intimate details of the ‘seasonal locals’ who inhabit the sleepy beach town’s caravan park.

The darkness which tinges the superficial joviality of Melbourne’s beaches was exploited by Stanley Kramer in his 1959 Hollywood doomsday drama On the Beach, which starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astair and Anthony Perkins. Nor has the potential for the beach’s cruelty been lost on Melbourne’s press, with the ‘horrible death’ met by 18 year old Peter Rooney, one of first swimmers to be taken by a shark in Port Phillip Bay, reported in graphic detail in 1876. Nearly a century later, Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt was another of countless many to be lost from Melbourne’s beaches. Heading out for a swim at Point Nepean in 1967 while still in office – he was never seen again.

The ever-present dangers of the beach, as manifest in both predatory sharks and the mighty power of the ocean itself, has given rise to a bountiful culture of life saving. 2007 marks the ‘Year of the Life Saver’, with many clubs originating between 1900 and 1910. Like the tide, individual clubs have come and gone, corresponding to outbreaks of war, recession, and drownings, however it was only in 2005 that a single presiding body was formed – Life Saving Victoria – unifying both the earlier Surf Life Saving Victoria and the Royal Life Saving Club. Each clubhouse sports its own cap and bathing suit colours, contributing to the rich and illustrious pageantry that is Melbourne beach culture.

Text © City Museum 2006

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