West St Kilda was built at the turn of the 19th century on reclaimed land, on roughly fifty hectares of the saltwater marshland at the edge of the Ancient Sea that the First Peoples of Australia called Nairm (Narrm, Naarm) — the great bay.
The West St Kilda Residents Association is an incorporated association registered with Consumer Affairs Victoria since 1999. It is non-sectarian and not politically partisan. It engages with all levels of government in the service of West St Kilda community interests.
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We respectfully acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan of the Bunurong Boon Wurrung people who are the traditional custodians and original inhabitants of the land on which we live and gather.
We pay respect to the Clan’s Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations Australians across this land to which we all belong.
West St Kilda is an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, a parcel of prime land, sand, and greenery sandwiched between Port Phillip Bay and Albert Park Reserve, garnished by West Beach and Catani Gardens, then topped off with a pickled Fitzroy Street.
Welcome to our former swamp. Within our borders: Catani Gardens and St Kilda West Beach. Across the shallow water: the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron marina berths. On the other side of the tram tracks: Albert Part Reserve sporting clubs. On the other side of Fitzroy St: the Victorian Pride Centre, the Prince Of Wales Hotel, Chronicles Bar & Tom’s Liquor, Leo’s, Topolino’s, Cone Heads, Di Stasio’s…
WOMINJEKA EURO YUROKE BALLUK
West St Kilda is bounded by Beaconsfield Parade, Fraser Street, and the No. 96 tram line. Built on reclaimed marshland at the turn of the 19th century, West St Kilda occupies a relatively small part of the City of Port Phillip, wedged between Albert Park Reserve & Port Phillip Bay at their narrowest convergence.
Mixing the sometimes confronting character of Fitzroy Street & St Kilda to its south-east with the urban gentility of Middle & Albert Parks to its north-west, this densely populated area is dotted with early 20th century flats & post-war apartment blocks, while featuring some of the most exuberant post-Victorian domestic architecture in Australia. With a little imagination, combined with the changing light at different times of the day or year, you may easily sense the atmosphere and drama of a bygone era in several of its streetscapes.
Before European settlement in what is now known as St Kilda, Australia’s First Peoples called it Euro Yuroke, from the Boon Wurrung language of the Yaluk-ut Weelam Clan of the Bunurong Boon Wurrung people—the original inhabitants and traditional custodians of this land, its waters and air.
KILDA WAS NO SAINT !
Various theories have been proposed for the word Kilda’s origin, which dates from the late 16th century. No saint is known by the name.
Haswell-Smith (2004) notes that the full name St Kilda first appears on a Dutch map dated 1666, and that it might have been derived from Norse sunt kelda (“sweet wellwater”) or from a mistaken Dutch assumption that the spring Tobar Childa was dedicated to a saint. (Tobar Childa is a tautological placename, consisting of the Gaelic and Norse words for well, i.e., “well well“.) Scottish writer Martin Martin, who visited in 1697, believed that the name “is taken from one Kilder, who lived here; and from him the large well Toubir-Kilda has also its name.”
Throughout Carlo Catani’s positions at the Lands and Public Works Departments as surveyor and draughtsman and his latter engineering roles he was crucial to the development of our late colonial through to early state arterial roadways.
The St Kilda Foreshore Gardens are 15 acres of foreshore reclaimed by Carlo Catani amidst 27 acres of St Kilda shoreline that he designed and landscaped. Catani Gardens are seen to embody Mediterranean influences that Carlo gleaned from his European tour of 1912, which ’til today fixes Catani as one of Victoria’s chief place-makers.
Mary Street, West St Kilda. At the central roundabout standing among Australian native plants is Bay Totem, a public art cum bird bath. Image Gerome Villarete Melbourne
West St Kilda residents worked with local community groups and local and state authorities to restore Catani Gardens and St Kilda West Beach — the foreshore stretching from St Kilda Pier to Fraser Street.
Melaleuca alternifolia at Catani Gardens. This ancient tea tree was last seen in the Spring of 2023. Image Gerome Villarete Melbourne
Heritage-listed Catani Gardens covers approximately six hectares of West St Kilda’s foreshore. This greenspace promenade and gathering place also serves as an outdoor venue for music & arts festivals, dance parties, and leisure sports competitions during the warmer Melbourne months.
Kite surfing at windy St Kilda West Beach. Image Gerome Villarete Melbourne
West Beach stretches westward for about a kilometer from St Kilda Pier. Together with the protected Fairy Penguin colony, this inner-city beachside playground for kite-surfing, paddle-boarding and sailing attracts many visitors to Melbourne.
Walking on West Beach. Humans and canines are free to saunter, run and roam unleashed at the local beach. Image Gerome Villarete Melbourne
“In 2017 realestate.com.au ranked Australian capital city suburbs by their access to schools, work opportunities, and a number of other factors. The top 10 suburbs were all in Victoria or Queensland. The nation’s ‘most livable’ suburb was St Kilda West (Albert Park came in at number 7 and Port Melbourne at number 9). As Melbourne was rated as the world’s most livable city from 2011 to 2017, we figure that St Kilda West must be the world’s most livable suburb! “ —Colin Fryer, President’s Report 2018 AGM
Who lives in St Kilda West? Find out from the 2021 Census
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The Association
The West St Kilda Residents Association is a not-for-profit, volunteer, community-based organisation of West St Kilda residents. It is non-sectarian and not politically partisan. Its general objective is to serve the community interests of West St Kilda residents.
The West St Kilda Residents Association aims to provide an open and public forum for all West St Kilda residents to express their views and to be informed on issues relating to their community.
– Preserving and enhancing neighbourhood character and residential amenity – Town planning, traffic management, parking regulation and public transport, and – Preservation of heritage buildings.
The West St Kilda Residents Association promotes integrated planning, active consultation, communication and engagement between all stakeholders in the neighbourhood.
Welcome to our former swamp. Within our borders: Catani Gardens and St Kilda West Beach. Across the shallow water: the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron marina berths. On the other side of the tram tracks: Albert Part Reserve sporting clubs. On the other side of Fitzroy St: the Victorian Pride Centre, the Prince Of Wales Hotel, Chronicles Bar & Tom’s Liquor, Leo’s, Cone Heads, Di Stasio’s, Topolino’s!
The West St Kilda Residents Association was formed on 23 March 1999 at a public meeting of about 100 residents of the West St Kilda area at what was then the West St Kilda RSL Club at 23 Loch Street.
The membership adopted Model Rules for an Incorporated Association and applied for incorporation on 8 June 1999 under the Associations Incorporations Act of 1981. This was granted on 18 June 1999.
After the Victorian State Government passed the Associations Incorporation Reform Act of 2012, the West St Kilda Residents Association Committee drafted a set of rules based on the new model, with changes to suit our specific requirements. These were approved at the 13 November 2013 AGM and accepted by Consumer Affairs Victoria.
The West St Kilda Residents Association is non-sectarian and not politically partisan.
Contours Of Catani (2021) by Buff Diss Artist. Image Gerome Villarete Melbourne
CONTOURS OF CATANI A public amenity uplift project
One of the public toilets in West St Kilda is located in Cummings Reserve, on the wide nature strip on Beaconsfield Parade. Its location is in a prime entertainment, sports, leisure and residential area in one of Melbourne’s treasured beachside locations.
The old brick toilet block had been slated for demolition by Port Phillip City Council, but due to more delays in the implementation of plans and the severe lack of upkeep, the public amenity had become a local blight. It is, however, a perfect canvas for public art.
That old, unwelcoming toilet block is now a welcome community landmark. We can only encourage Council to consider building the new design replacement toilets next to the existing structure or in another location nearby—after all, this open-air brick toilet block must be the last of its generation in our bayside city.
Bay Totem (2001) by Peter Blizzard, Artist. Image Robert Hamer
“Artists are invited to submit concepts for a sculpture fountain that both meets the commemorative aspect of Federation and blends harmoniously with a spectacular yet sensitive environment. It is envisaged that the proposed installation should be enduring and provide a new icon of historical and cultural significance to the City of Port Phillip and greater Melbourne. The aim of the project is to mark one hundred years of Australian nationhood around a theme that may be described as ‘emerging together’- a concept equally relevant to Australia in the next one hundred years as we tackle the remaining tests of tolerance and reconciliation. The water element symbolic of continuity and an ongoing process of calmness and healing. In developing this theme artists may wish to consider Federation in its broadest context: how do we view it, what does it mean to us? How to describe in visual terms what came out of this era—an upsurge of new ideas and international influences, a wider recognition of the hemisphere in which we live, or a re-affirmation of our own national identity?
Alternatively, we may see this process in human terms: as a new beginning, to give us an occasion to review our history and challenge attitudes to Indigenous cultures and to successive immigrant groups. It may also be a spiritual journey, contemplative and reassuring of our ability to connect, change and evolve over time.”
Commissioned jointly by the City of Port Phillip and the West St Kilda Residents Association.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission in Victoria was Australia’s first formal truth-telling inquiry into historic and ongoing social, economic, institutional, and systemic injustice against Australia’s First Peoples since colonisation.
Walk For Truth on Wednesday 18 June 2025 from King’s Domain to Parliament House was the culmination of Yoorrook’s 500+km walk from Portland to Melbourne.
Walk For Truth was a public demonstration of our commitment to the truth as well as an invitation to all Australians to uphold community truth-telling.
Why is truth fundamental? Because to live is to engage with reality—not illusion. To ignore, deny, distort, or remain ignorant of the truth is to participate in a lie. A lie cannot survive in an examined life. Gerome Villarete 26 June 2025 Art Saves Lives
[Media Gerome Villarete Melbourne]
POST-SCRIPTUM:
Although Yoorrook has concluded, the responsibility it represents does not end. The work of building a better future—grounded in truth, understanding, justice and genuine transformation—continues, and it belongs to every Australian.
“No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace In Every Step
“The centre of democracy is truth. You are not free if you’ve been lied to.” —Jason Stanley
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” —David Mitchell
“The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social democracy to include Indigenous Australians. There is everything to gain.” —Paul Keating (Redfern Park Address, 10 December 1992)
“Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when we are overwhelmed by its accompanying vulnerability, when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or when it touches the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.
“Anger truly felt at its centre is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here; it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete but absolute mirror-opposite of its true internal essence.” —David Whyte, On Anger More at Making Sense | David Whyte
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Working For Peace
Putting On A Pow Wow, Film by Keeley Gould
“I was not born in America. America was born on my land.”
Work For Peace, Music by Gil Scott-Heron
“There are 8.2 billion human beings on the planet this year (2024), and the projection for 2050 is 9.7 billion. A peak of 10.3 billion inhabitants is expected in the mid of 2080s, at which point the world population is expected to head downwards reaching 10.2 billion in 2100. Whereas the populations of some countries continue to grow quickly, other countries are seeing population shrinkage. Concomitantly, the world’s population is aging as life expectancy at the global scale continues to rise and fertility to fall. These are some of the major takeaways from the latest United Nations world population estimates and projections (World Population Prospects: The 2024 Revision).”
The Journey Towards Human Rights, Narrated by Morgan Freeman
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.”
