Mentone Beach is a beach located in Mentone, on

Port Phillip Bay Port Phillip ( Kulin: ''Narm-Narm'') or Port Phillip Bay is a horsehead-shaped enclosed bay on the central coast of southern Victoria, Australia. The bay opens into the Bass Strait via a short, narrow channel known as The Rip, and is compl ...

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, 21 kilometres south from the

Melbourne City Centre The Melbourne central business district (also known colloquially as simply "The City" or "The CBD") is the city centre and main urban area of the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, centred on the Hoddle Grid, the oldest part of the city la ...

. Mentone beach is the northern section of a beach that extends alongside

Beaumaris Bay Beaumaris Bay ( ) is a bay in the east of Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia. Beaumaris Bay commences at the cliffs at Rickett's Point in the south of the suburb of Beaumaris Beaumaris ( ; cy, Biwmares ) is a town and community on the Isl ...

from the cliffs at Rickett's Point in

Beaumaris Beaumaris ( ; cy, Biwmares ) is a town and community on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, of which it is the former county town of Anglesey. It is located at the eastern entrance to the Menai Strait, the tidal waterway separating Anglesey from th ...

to Frankston in the south on the eastern shoreline of Port Phillip Bay. Mentone Beach is one of the Port Phillip Bay beaches associated with the

Heidelberg School The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. It has latterly been described as Australian impressionism. Melbourne art critic Sidney Dickinson coined the term in an 1891 review of works by Arthur Streeton and ...

of Australian artists.

Geology

Mentone Beach was formed when Port Phillip sunklands in southern Victoria were inundated to form Port Phillip Bay. The inundation was triggered in part by the Selwyn Fault on the east and the Rowsley Fault on the west side of the bay. The Beaumaris Monocline is a geological feature which is expressed in the cliffs near Beaumaris and Rickett's Point at the northern end of Mentone Beach. This structure controls the coastal indentation, and therefore the Mentone and Mordialloc beaches, which lie due south of Rickett's Point. Seagull rock is a large rock in the shallow water off the beach. It is home to albatrosses, cormorants and seagulls. OzCoast, the

Geoscience Australia Geoscience Australia is an agency of the Australian Government. It carries out geoscientific research. The agency is the government's technical adviser on all aspects of geoscience, and custodian of the geographic and geological data and knowle ...

Online Coastal Information Database, describes Mentone Beach as:

Aboriginal history

Prior to European settlement the area around Mentone Beach was the land of the Bunurong people of the

Kulin nation The Kulin nation is an alliance of five Aboriginal nations in south central Victoria, Australia. Their collective territory extends around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River va ...

. Between 1839 and 1849 the Bunurong people and the area around Mentone Beach came under the control of the Port Phillip Protectorate.

European history

In the summer of 1886 and 1887

Tom Roberts Thomas William Roberts (8 March 185614 September 1931) was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism. After studying in Melbourne, he travelled to Europe ...

and

Frederick McCubbin Frederick McCubbin (25 February 1855 – 20 December 1917) was an Australian artist, art teacher and prominent member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism. Born and raised in Melbourne, Victoria, McCubb ...

who had formed the

of painting set up a painters camp at Mentone to paint outdoors. It was here they first met

Arthur Streeton Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (8 April 1867 – 1 September 1943) was an Australian landscape painter and a leading member of the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism. Early life Streeton was born in Mt Moriac, Victoria, sou ...

painting at Rickett's Point. Roberts later described the meeting and his first impressions of Streeton, "'He was standing out on the wet rocks, painting there, and I saw that his work was full of light and air. We asked him to join us and that was the beginning of a long and delightful association." A number of significant and important Australian painting resulted from the Heidelberg School camps in and around Mentone Beach. File:Tom Roberts - Slumbering sea, Mentone - Google Art Project.jpg, '' Slumbering Sea, Mentone'' 1887, oil on canvas by

. File:Charles Conder - A holiday at Mentone - Google Art Project.jpg, '' A holiday at Mentone'', 1888, oil on canvas by

Charles Conder Charles Edward Conder (24 October 1868 – 9 February 1909) was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer. He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australi ...

. In the late 1800s Mentone was founded as a resort town with the beach as one of the main attractions. The

Mentone railway station Mentone railway station is located on the Frankston line in Victoria, Australia. It serves the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Mentone, and it opened on 19 December 1881 as Balcombe Road. It was renamed Balcombe on 1 September 1882, and was ...

, opened in 1881, provided access from the city of Melbourne. In 1884 an enclosed sea baths were built at Mentone Beach by the National Land Company to attract holiday makers and to boost real estate sales. Men and women used the sea baths at different times with coloured flags, white for women and red for men, indicating which gender was allowed to use the facilities. Between 1891 and 1964 there was also a pier located at the bottom of Naples Road that stretched over 100 metres out to sea. Mentone Beach Victoria

The Mentone Lifesaving Club was formed in 1920 when the newly created

City of Mordialloc A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

(now the

City of Kingston The City of Kingston is a local government area in Victoria, Australia in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, its northern boundary lying approximately 15 km from the Melbourne city centre along the north-eastern shorelines of Port Ph ...

) donated two bathing boxes to the newly formed Mentone Swimming and Life Saving Club on the site to the south of the former Mentone Pier.

References

{{Authority control Beaches of Victoria (Australia) Port Phillip