Capel Sound is a suburb on the

Mornington Peninsula The Mornington Peninsula is a peninsula located south of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is surrounded by Port Phillip to the west, Western Port to the east and Bass Strait to the south, and is connected to the mainland in the north. Geogra ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, south of Melbourne's

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

, located within the

Shire of Mornington Peninsula The Shire of Mornington Peninsula is a local government area in southeastern Metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is located to the south of the Melbourne City Centre. It has an area of 724 square kilometres and in June 2018 it had a ...

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a State (administrative division), state, province, divi ...

. Capel Sound recorded a population of 5,246 at the 2021 census. A distinguishing landmark feature of Capel Sound is the Tootgarook Swamp, the largest example left of a shallow freshwater marsh in the Port Phillip bay region. The swamp is also described by

Melbourne Water Melbourne Water is a Victorian Government-owned statutory authority that controls and manages much of the water bodies and supplies in metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, including the reservoirs, lakes, wetlands, canals and urban cree ...

as a ground water dependent ecosystem. The 381 hectare swamp is found on the lower section of the

, called the Nepean Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. A large portion of the Tootgarook Swamp is zoned as residential and industrial, with roughly half of the actual swamp inside the green wedge and half within the

urban growth boundary An urban growth boundary, or UGB, is a regional boundary, set in an attempt to control urban sprawl by, in its simplest form, mandating that the area inside the boundary be used for urban development and the area outside be preserved in its natural ...

History

Rosebud West Post Office opened on 12 January 1938 and closed around 1996. The town kept the name of the post office until an effort to change the name began in 2015. Proponents hoped a name change would distance the town from being seen as only an economically disadvantaged suburb of nearby Rosebud. About 56% of residents surveyed voted in favor of the name change. On 15 September 2016, Mornington Peninsula Shire Council officially changed the name from Rosebud West to Capel Sound. The new name was derived from an 1836 survey chart of the area, and was already in use by local businesses such as The Capel Sound Shopping Village.

References

Suburbs of Melbourne Suburbs of the Shire of Mornington Peninsula {{melbourne-geo-stub