Port Melbourne
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Port Melbourne is a suburb of Melbourne in the state of Victoria in Australia , 5 km southwest of Melbourne city center. Your local government areas are the cities of Port Phillip and Melbourne . The 2016 census found a population of 16,175.
The suburb is bordered by Hosbsons Bay and the lower reaches of the Yarra River . Port Melbourne covers a large area with the districts of Fishermens Bend , Garden City , Montague and Beacon Cove .
The area north of the West Gate Freeway belongs to Melbourne, the southern areas to Port Phillip.
Historically this area was known as Sandridge and became Melbourne's second port as it is directly adjacent to the city center.
Port Melbourne, which used to be heavily industrialized, has undergone intensive urban renewal over the past 10 years. Today Port Melbourne is a historically interesting mixed area, which includes industrial and port areas along the Yarra River, as well as parks, beaches, exclusive apartment buildings and the restaurants and cafes of '' Bay Street ''. The suburb is also an important east-west link and also forms one end of the West Gate Bridge .
history
The area of what is now Port Melbourne was first settled in 1839 by Wilbraham Liardet , who set up a hotel, a pier and a post office there. Initially the area was called Liardet Beach , but was soon officially called Sandridge and finally Port Melbourne from 1884 . During the gold rush in Victoria in the 1850s, the area was well known. More and more ships docked at their pier and Sandridge became an important freight port. To avoid the high cost of transporting small ships up the Yarra River to Melbourne, Australia's first railroad, the Port Melbourne Line , was built in 1854 , connecting Sandridge with Melbourne city center. The Sandridge Bridge , which is no longer in use , got its name from the former railway line.
In 1860, Port Melbourne was one of the first areas in Victoria to receive city rights as Sandridge Borough , which later became the Local Government Area of the City of Port Melbourne .
In the early years of Port Melbourne, the suburb was separated from the neighboring suburb of Albert Park by a large, shallow lagoon . The lagoon was slowly filled in over the years until it disappeared completely in 1929. Today this area covers the Lagoon Reserve , a public park east of the Esplanade between Liardet Street and Graham Street. The original size of the lagoon was much larger.
As a freight and ferry port, Port Melbourne has a number of hotels. Early industrial operations included a sugar factory, a soap factory, a candle factory, chemical factories, rice and grain mills, gas works, a still, and a boot factory. Station Pier and Princes Pier were important landing stages for immigrant ships before air travel to Australia became possible and affordable.
For a long time, Port Melbourne was a focus of Melbourne's underworld , which operated smuggling at the jetties. The old Ships Painters and Dockers Union was known to be controlled by gangsters. The Waterside Workers Federation of Australia, on the other hand, had a member of the Communist Party of Australia as general secretary for many years .
Since the merger of the Local Government Areas of Port Melbourne and Port Phillip in 1994, many former administration buildings in Port Melbourne have been used differently. So is z. B. Port Melbourne Town Hall is now a public library.
As the port became less important and industry moved away from the city center, Port Melbourne increasingly became a residential suburb. The areas where Port Melbourne originally developed, at Station Pier and z. Princes Pier, which is currently unused, has been built on with a mixture of apartment blocks and smaller apartment blocks; best known is Beacon Cove .
traffic
Road traffic
Two major highways run through Port Melbourne, the West Gate Freeway , which runs east to west from Westgate Bridge and the CityLink , which runs north to Bolte Bridge. Other major streets are Bay Street , Williamstown Road, Lorimer Street (along the Yarra River), Graham Street, Salmon Street, Inglis Street, and Beach Street (to Beaconsfield Parade and St. Kilda). The streets of Port Melbourne show little planning and so it is often difficult to find the right way.
Port Melbourne is covered by a dense network of public bus routes that connect the suburb with Melbourne city center and other suburbs.
Rail transport
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Port Melbourne is on tram line 109, which has a high frequency and is heavily used since rail traffic was discontinued in 1987. There are a number of disused freight tracks, but tram No. 109 is the only remaining rail link to Melbourne city center. However, there are some plans for further lines, e.g. B. to St. Kilda and Fishermens Bend.
port
Port Melbourne is still used today as a landing stage for passenger and cargo ships. Many luxury liners, ferries and other ships dock at Station Pier. This also includes the Spirit of Tasmania from TT-Line Pty. Ltd. to Tasmania . Freight traffic is handled further west, near the mouth of the Yarra River at Webb Dock .
Residential development
Residential buildings range from Victorian woodworkers' homes to new apartment blocks. Over the past twenty years, Port Melbourne has transformed from a suburb for the poor to a home for the richest. Many large apartment blocks cover large parts of the land that once stood on factories and warehouses, such as B. HM @ S on Beach Street, ID Apartments on Pickles Street and Rouse Street, Bayshore and Bayview on Bay Street. Each of these blocks of flats consists of many individual buildings and many new blocks incorporate historical buildings. A large proportion of wealthy people live in Port Melbourne today, but there are also even simpler people who live in tenement houses and buildings in the "Old Port". Many families immigrated from Greece in the 1950s, and later immigrants from Africa and Asia .
trade
Bay Street is Port Melbourne's historic shopping street.
Port Melbourne is currently home to Circus Oz , Australia's world famous contemporary circus, which has its international headquarters on the corner of Bay Street and Rouse Street.
The Maritime Union of Australia (Australian Dockers 'and Seafarers' Union) still has strong support in the area.
crime
In May 2002, Victor Peirce , a member of the Australian Mafia , was shot dead on Bay Street in Port Melbourne. The crime has not yet been solved. Port Melbourne is still an Australian Labor Party stronghold during political elections , although it is now home to many high-income people.
Sports
The Port Melbourne Football Club , known as The Borough is one of the oldest football clubs and playing in the Victorian Football League . Another team are the Port Melbourne Colts , who play in the Western Region Football League .
Districts of Port Melbourne
Port Melbourne has three districts:
Garden City
Garden City is a district of Port Melbourne and Port Phillip. It was laid out as a garden city modeled on similar suburbs in the United Kingdom in the 1920s . The first houses were built by the state bank as low-cost houses, followed by apartment houses built by the Housing Commission of Victoria . The settlement consists of two-storey semi-detached houses, which are arranged around a few open spaces in the style of a dissolved Beaux-Arts architecture . Contrary to prevailing opinion, the "banks" were never apartment buildings, but were always privately owned. The "banking houses" later became known as Nobs Hill , which reflects the relative wealth of its residents compared to that of the clinker tenement houses built later. The Housing Commission houses were called Little Baghdad .
Beacon Cove
Beacon Cove is a suburb of Port Melbourne and Port Phillip. It consists of around 1,100 apartments in a mixture of low apartment blocks and a few high-rise buildings with a supermarket, various small shops, a number of cafes and restaurants and a gym . The district was built from 1996 over the course of ten years by the Australian construction company Mirvac after the plan for a gated community called Sandridge City could not be realized. The area used to be factory premises. Beacon Cove has a beach promenade, palm-lined boulevards and enables the operation of two ship beacons. Most of the low houses are grouped around a series of small parks and resemble the nearby St. Vincent Gardens in Albert Park in their postmodern, scaled-down Beaux Arts style . Along the waterfront is a series of 11-14 story high-rise buildings, at the western end of which are some very luxurious, low-rise houses right on Sandridge Beach. The houses on the enclosed Beach Street, which no longer runs along the coast, and the apartments on the beach have direct access to the beach promenade. The construction project was carried out in several stages, starting from Princes Street to the west. You can see this in the different architectural styles.
Fishermens Bend
Fishermens Bend (originally: Fishermen's Bend) is a district of Port Melbourne and the City of Melbourne. It is located immediately east of the West Gate Bridge on the south bank of the Yarra River across from Coode Island on the north bank of the river.
Fishermans Bend also included what is now Garden City, which was separated and renamed in 1929.
Fishermen of European descent had lived in the area since the 1850s. Approx. 30 families lived on the Bend, and they often found additional work at the berths and on cargo ships. Ballast was loaded onto the ships returning to Europe. The people lived in desolate huts on the Bend, made of corrugated iron, flattened kerosene cans and wood. There were no streets or shops and no sewers. The drinking water was obtained from hung sails and stored in steel tanks or barrels; the milk came from a nearby farm. Fishing is still practiced in the bay today, but only two licenses belong to the descendants of these first settlers. The last corrugated iron hut was demolished in 1970 to make way for the Webb Dock. Today the headquarters of the Surf Life Saving Club is located here .
The Fishermens Bend district also has an important place in Australian aviation history, as many well-known aircraft manufacturers used to be based there, e.g. For example, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation , Holden , Smorgen Steel , the Government Aircraft Factories , the Aeronautical Research Laboratory and a factory of Boeing . From 1958 to 1994 the Australian automotive industry was also located there with the companies Australian Motor Industries (AMI) and Toyota Australia .
There is now a marina called D'Albora Marinas Pier 35 and various moorings for container ships.
Fishermans Bend has a large public park, Westgate Park , and a large natural wetland area .
literature
- GH Eardley: The Pier Donkeys of Victoria March 1965
Web links
- The Australian National Aviation Museum (English)
- Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society (English)
- Melbourne Port Phillip Council (English)
- Australian Places - Port Melbourne (English) ( Memento of 9 July 2005 at the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Australian Bureau of Statistics : Port Melbourne ( English ) In: 2016 Census QuickStats . June 27, 2017. Retrieved April 27, 2020.
- ↑ Plan of the Lagoon Reserve
- ↑ Australian Places - Garden City (English) ( Memento from August 24, 2006 in the Internet Archive )