St Kilda and the Bay: Melbourne's Beachside Entertainment Precinct

St Kilda, the Melbourne bayside suburb whose Esplanade, the Luna Park amusement park, and the Acland Street cake shops and the restaurants create the most festive and the most historically rich entertainment precinct in Melbourne and the neighbourhood whose transformation from the working-class and the bohemian community of the mid-twentieth century through the decades of the heroin crisis and the sex work that defined the neighbourhood's social challenges in the 1980s and 1990s to the gentrified and the premium residential and the tourism destination that the current St Kilda represents, sustains the complex character and the social history that the neighbourhood's identity carries as the layered heritage of the successive communities that have called St Kilda home. The suburb's position on the Port Phillip Bay foreshore, with the St Kilda Beach and the Elwood Beach providing the swimming and the sailing access that the bay's sheltered water creates for the inner Melbourne beachside lifestyle that the proximity to the CBD makes uniquely valuable, sustains the residential premium and the tourism activity that the beach setting and the Esplanade entertainment strip create as the St Kilda lifestyle proposition.

Luna Park Melbourne, the historic amusement park on the St Kilda foreshore whose Mr Moon face entrance and the Scenic Railway rollercoaster that has operated continuously since the park's opening in 1912 create the heritage amusement park character that the National Heritage listing protects and that the community campaigns have sustained against the development pressure that the foreshore location and the commercial value of the site create as the ongoing challenge for the heritage preservation. The Scenic Railway, the oldest operating rollercoaster in the world and the heritage attraction that defines Luna Park's national significance beyond the fun park function, provides the physical embodiment of the amusement park heritage that the community values as the irreplaceable connection to the Melbourne entertainment history that the railway and the Mr Moon facade represent. The park's survival through the commercial challenges and the community campaigns that have sustained it against closure and development proposals reflects the community attachment to the heritage amusement park as the neighbourhood landmark and the Melbourne cultural asset.

The St Kilda Esplanade Sunday Market, the weekly market on the Upper Esplanade above the beach that the arts and the craft stalls, the food producers, and the second-hand goods sellers that the market program accommodates in the Sunday gathering that the St Kilda and the broader Melbourne community uses for the weekend market browsing, the coffee, and the Esplanade atmosphere, provides the community market identity that the St Kilda weekly gathering creates as the social infrastructure of the neighbourhood and the visitor attraction that the regularity and the reputation of the Esplanade market sustains as one of Melbourne's most visited weekend markets. The market's position on the Upper Esplanade, above the beach and the palm-lined promenade that the bay foreshore provides, creates the market setting that the beachside atmosphere and the bay views enhance for the market visitor who combines the browsing with the Sunday morning walk along the Esplanade that the St Kilda foreshore sustains as the most pleasant waterfront walk in the Melbourne metropolitan area.

The Acland Street cake shops and the St Kilda Jewish community's contribution to the neighbourhood's food culture, the Central European pastry and the cake tradition that the Jewish migrants from Central Europe established in Acland Street in the postwar era and that the cake shop character of the street has maintained as the heritage food culture that sustains the Acland Street identity, provide the food heritage that complements the dining and the entertainment culture of the broader St Kilda precinct. The Acland Street cake shops, whose the window displays of the cream cakes, the strudel, and the Eastern European pastries create the most distinctive retail food streetscape in Melbourne and the heritage food tradition that the St Kilda community values as the neighbourhood's most specific culinary contribution to the Melbourne food culture, sustain the Acland Street character that the new restaurants and the café culture have added to without replacing in the street whose food identity the cake shops have anchored for the three quarters of a century since the postwar Jewish migration established the tradition.

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