Frankston - Culture and History

Middens on the cliff tops of the Mornington Peninsula indicate that the Bunurong Aborigines used the area on a seasonal basis for hundreds if not thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.

The first European person to occupy land in the Frankston area was a man named John Thomas Smith c.1836. Wilburham 'Frank' Liardet established the 'Ballam Ballam' estate in 1843 and built a home which is still standing to the east of town. Some feel that Frankston was named for him. In fact, there are many theories about various Franks. One of the most ostensibly plausible is that, in the 1850s, a man named Frank Stone owned the pub at the mouth of Kanahook Creek around which the settlement developed.

About 1846 James Davey took up a large holding which extended from Mount Eliza to what is now known as Olivers Hill. The latter was named after local fisherman, James Oliver, who built a cottage atop the hill from whence he kept an eye out for fish in the waters below. Thomas McComb, who came to Frankston in 1852, was another who did much to develop the local fishing industry. Timber-cutting was another early industry at a time when the area was still characterised by grassland with plenty of kangaroos and she-oaks and some gum trees.

In 1850 Victoria was declared a separate colony to New South Wales and surveys of the area were conducted. The first official land sales occurred at Frankston in 1854. It was essentially a fishing village at that time with the anglers living in tents or humpies on the foreshore. They would sail up to Melbourne with their catch or travel along the so-called Fish Track which later served as the basis of the Nepean Highway. A pier was completed in 1857 although additions continued until 1866. A school was established within the first Anglican church in 1855 and the first Frankston post office was opened in 1857. A pottery was established i n1859. In the 1860s there were about 30 people at Frankston with about 200 in the surrounding area.

The first state school was built at Frankston in 1874 and a mechanics' institute and free library in 1880. The first savings bank opened in 1881 and two brickworks and a cordial factory were operating in the 1880s, with a bacon factory opening in 1889.

When the railway arrived in 1882, Frankston gradually became something of a holiday resort, like the emergent Sorrento. Frankston was declared a city in 1966.

The Frankston Guitar Festival is held in April and the Dolphin City Festival from late November into December. The Dolphin Market is held every second Sunday in Beach St.