Aspendale is a suburb in

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 me ...

, Victoria, Australia, 27 km south-east 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 " cit ...

, located within the City of Kingston local government area. Aspendale recorded a population of 7,285 at the .

Description

Aspendale is bordered by

Port Phillip 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 completel ...

to the west, Mordialloc and Braeside to the north, Edithvale to the south, and Aspendale Gardens to the east. Aspendale is bisected by the

Nepean Highway Nepean Highway runs south from St Kilda Junction in Victoria, Australia to Portsea, close to the eastern shore of Port Phillip. It is the primary road route to central Melbourne from Melbourne's southern suburbs. History Originally known as Art ...

and the

Frankston line The Frankston railway line is a 42.7 km commuter rail passenger train service in Melbourne, Victoria. It operates between Flinders Street in the Melbourne central business district and Frankston through the south-eastern suburbs incl ...

. These provide the main connections to inner Melbourne. On the beach side of the highway, there is more medium density development, and land prices are very high. Some larger blocks with older houses remain in this area, although many of these larger blocks have been subdivided into flats and units in the past two decades. On the other side of the Nepean Highway, housing is typically low-density, and land values are not as high. The Eastern boundary of Aspendale is the Mordialloc main drain. This area is very picturesque, with eucalypts and a long gravel track that extends from Mordialloc Creek, past the back of St Louis De Montfort's School to the Edithvale wetlands. The historic Doyles Bridge Hotel is situated at Number 1, Nepean Highway, Aspendale.

Facilities

Recreational facilities in Aspendale include the Rossdale Golf Course and Aspendale Life Saving Club. Other sports clubs include the Aspendale Cricket Club and the St Brigid-St Louis Cricket Club. In conjunction with neighbouring suburb Edithvale, Aspendale has an

Australian Rules Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by ...

football team (Edithvale-Aspendale) competing in the

Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League The Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League (abbreviated "MPNFL") is an Australian rules football competition, governed by the AFL South East. The MPNFL contains teams near the south eastern region of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. At th ...

(the original team of Gerard Healy and Dylan Shiel), Aspendale is home to two primary schools - St Louis de Montfort Catholic Primary School and Aspendale Primary School; two kindergartens - Aspendale North Kindergarten and Nola Barber Kindergarten; and one secondary school - Mordialloc Secondary College. There was previously also Aspendale Technical School, but this was closed in the 1990s and the land was sold by the State Government to be subdivided as housing. Aspendale has two churches - St Louis de Montfort

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

Church and Aspendale

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their na ...

Church. Aspendale has its own

train station A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing ...

, which forms part of the

. There are two small commercial areas in Aspendale, located in Station Street and Laura Street. These take the form of single-sided strip shopping centres. The

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO ...

facility at Aspendale houses about 150 staff from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, together with scientific facilities such as a

wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

for calibrating

anemometer In meteorology, an anemometer () is a device that measures wind speed and direction. It is a common instrument used in weather stations. The earliest known description of an anemometer was by Italian architect and author Leon Battista Alberti ...

s, and laboratories for studying

air pollution Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different type ...

and

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

History

Aspendale was occupied by

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples o ...

for many thousands of years before European settlement. Europeans began farming the area in the 19th century and displaced local inhabitants. When European appropriation began, the land was occupied by the

Bunurong The Boonwurrung people are an Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation, who are the traditional owners of the land from the Werribee River to Wilsons Promontory in the Australian state of Victoria. Their territory includes part of what is now ...

people. The geography of the area at the start of European settlement consisted of large sand dune complexes on the coast, and wetland areas inland. The area is flat and low-lying, reaching above sea level by only a few metres. The geography and ecology of the area has undergone radical changes as a result of European settlement. Much of the wetland area was drained during the second half of the 19th century, with the largest remnants now protected in the

Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands The Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands is a collection of principally freshwater swamps and marshlands totalling in southeastern Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, about southeast of Melbourne CBD. It is the largest natural wetland of its type in t ...

Ramsar site A Ramsar site is a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention,8 ha (O) *** Permanent 8 ha (P) *** Seasonal Intermittent < 8 ha(Ts) ** Aspendale Park Racecourse, a horse racing and motor racing track. The suburb's name comes from ''Aspen'', a successful racehorse. Aspendale train station was built primarily to cater towards the racing crowd in the late part of the 19th century. The racecourse closed in the late 1940s, and nothing remains of it. Aspendale beach huts

Although there are a few older houses nearer the beach, it was in the 1950s, 60s and 70s that Aspendale was extensively subdivided for residential purposes. Today, it is almost entirely residential in character. Houses are typically detached and made of brick. Blocks of land from this era are usually less than a quarter of an acre in size. Many of the street names acknowledge the area's coastal and nautical heritage; e.g. 'Foam', 'Longbeach', 'Dolphin', 'Captain', 'Gale' and 'Anchor'. Other street names are Aboriginal, e.g. 'Yallambee,' 'Iluka,' 'Tarlee,' 'Nirringa' and 'Cooinda.' Other streets were named after racehorses, e.g. 'Marabou,' 'Lincoln' and 'Gothic.' Aspendale Life Saving Club has a long proud history beginning in 1926 and is currently being rebuilt courtesy of state funding. Aspendale Post Office opened on 16 December 1908. Aspendale railway station opened in April 1891 as ''Aspendale Park Race-Course'', and was renamed ''Aspendale'' in 1905. During the late 1950s the Catholic population of Aspendale sought to celebrate Mass locally, initially at Martin’s Dance Hall opposite Aspendale Station. When the hall was sold, Mass was celebrated in the old Scout Hall at Regents Park. In 1961 the current Catholic school and church site was purchased, with the school opening in 1965.

Artistic and Naturalist Heritage

The ornithologist Archibald James Campbell took a number of nature photographs in Aspendale between 1896 and 1903. In the 1960s, the art dealer and restaurateur

Georges Mora Georges Mora (26 June 1913 – 7 June 1992) was a German-born Australian entrepreneur, art dealer, patron, connoisseur and restaurateur. Early life Mora was born Gunter Morawski on 26 June 1913 in Leipzig, Germany, of Jewish Polish heritag ...

had a beachside house in Aspendale which was regularly visited by artists such as Albert Tucker and

Sidney Nolan Sir Sidney Robert Nolan (22 April 191728 November 1992) was one of Australia's leading artists of the 20th century. Working in a wide variety of mediums, his oeuvre is among the most diverse and prolific in all of modern art. He is best known ...

. Art patrons John and Sunday Reed also had a beachhouse in the dunes of Aspendale beach. Their

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

home was designed in 1961 by architect David McGlashan. This role of Aspendale as an artists' haven was recognised in an exhibition at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery in early 2008. Prior to forming part of the City of Kingston, Aspendale was part of the

City of Chelsea The City of Chelsea was a local government area about south of Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia, on the eastern side of Port Phillip. The city covered an area of , and existed from 1920 until 1994. History Chelsea was ...

and, before that, the Shire of Carrum.

References

External links