Coles, Myer, Ansett: In my suburb, these weren’t brands. They were our neighbours

As an impressionable 12-year-old, I had my first encounter with Mount Eliza in the summer of 1959. At the time, it was a hamlet at the northern elevated end of the Mornington Peninsula, consisting of a general store and petrol station with a thick coastal tea tree backdrop and impressive views across Port Phillip Bay about 1½ hours from Melbourne.

On a very humid day, my parents and I joined many other day-trippers perched on the clifftops overlooking Port Phillip Bay, eagerly anticipating the filming of On the Beach.

Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner on the set of On The Beach, which was filmed on location in Melbourne.

For once, the tabloid newspapers had got it right. “Hollywood comes to Mount Eliza”, blared the headlines and, sure enough, down there not far away on the sandy beach, we could see Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and the director Stanley Kramer creating a film version of Neville Shute’s novel about a nuclear war scenario.

In a country burdened by “the tyranny of distance”, it was remarkable that such famous actors would fly across the world to Melbourne. Gardner was at the time involved in a tempestuous relationship with the legendary Frank Sinatra, then stuck back in Palm Springs. Her admirable feistiness and flirtatiousness were fodder for local journalists. Video footage of the day captures the celebratory atmosphere: yachts, laughing children, beach umbrellas and seagulls, as if in a painting.

Since then, the population of Mount Eliza has grown, and it now looks less like somewhere on the outskirts of civilisation. A substantial village, as it frames itself, it still has a dash of style, as Porsches, Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers glide through.

Freeways are a distant hum, bringing the wider world closer than when the Nepean Highway was essentially a one-way track through the bush. What has endured, though, is its character as a relaxed enclave. Cavoodles accompany locals, who live serenely when not sending opinionated letters to The Age. Younger families belong to multiple sports clubs and some coffee shops host local musicians in the tradition of a sometime-local, James Reyne.

Named a year after Melbourne’s founding as a tribute to Eliza Elliott – the wife of Captain William Hobson, a Royal Navy officer who became the first governor of New Zealand – the place was already being perceived as a retreat for advantaged colonists. Tragically, as was repeated across the continent, most of the Boonwurrung Indigenous clans soon died or were dispersed by white settlers coveting the land. Neo-Gothic stately piles set in landed estates – some still extant – became the norm. By the 1920s, affluent people from Toorak, South Yarra and Camberwell came to holiday in guest houses with names like “Ranelagh” and “Wimbledon”.

Plaques now highlight the roles of the distinguished American architects Walter Burley Griffin and his wife, Marion Mahoney Griffin, for their influence. They designed Ranelagh Estate in 1924 to complement the natural beauty of the hilly terrain nestled between the coast and bushland. One century on, the Americans’ vision of “better air, sunlight verdure and beauty” is still evident, with long curved streets providing views of trees, greenery and open parkland reserves.

By the 1930s, the perceived health-inducing benefits of coastal breezes and clifftop heights led to the transformation of an old mansion on Jacksons Road into the home of the Children’s Hospital’s orthopaedic branch, where young patients with polio and tuberculosis were treated, some of them encased in iron lungs.

By the 1970s, when I returned to live in Mount Eliza as an adult, the town’s luminaries included Sir Laurence Hartnett, the founder of the Holden car, and his neighbour, Sir Edgar Coles, of retail fame. Both could regularly be seen picking up their milk supplies in their respective Rolls-Royces. This was a time when, lending themselves to stereotyping, the locals checked the time of day by looking skyward in the morning and evening for the sight of transport tycoon Sir Reginald Ansett passing in his private helicopter.

Nearby, in one pocket on Daveys Bay Road, Liberal Party administrators and politicians like Sir Phillip Lynch effectively lived in a compound close to Kenneth Myer’s superb mid-century modern masterpiece, now sadly demolished.

Up the hill, Toorak College on Old Mornington Road was and remains a dead ringer for a Home Counties country manor straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. The still-unsolved grisly 1966 murder of Jaguar-driving sociable investor Colonel John Duncan – featuring hand restraints and a pillow – maintained the theme.

As the 1980s arrived, a louche lifestyle behind clipped hedges saw creatives, beach nudists and languid poolside types come to the fore. The term “swinging couples” came into vogue. All of this was chronicled superbly in Joanna Murray-Smith’s 2007 novel, Sunnyside.

Her father, Stephen, an eminent literary editor, and his wife, Nita, famously hosted treetop jazz parties attended by the likes of the legendary US folk singer Pete Seeger, the Australian novelist Alan “I can jump puddles” Marshall; and, for one weekend, an inebriated William Golding of Lord of the Flies repute.

Over the years, many writers and entertainers have grown up here: the Daddo brothers, Mick Molloy, Jean Kittson, Sammy J (who, full disclosure, is my son) and Jimmy Rees. Marching to a different and ironic drum is almost a trademark for this part of the world. Not having a railway connection has arguably allowed Mount Eliza to retain its distinctive character in 2024. Footpaths are almost seen as irrelevant in a setting of wide roads and extensive verges in the Woodlands precinct, for example.

Closer to the bay, some of the older lanes are like time capsules, with unmade roads and treed sanctuaries for kookaburras and parrots. The occasional well-fed fox drifts past at dusk and silence reigns.

Tim Ross, the architectural historian, grew up here and has become an expert advocate for mid-century modern houses in Melbourne and Sydney. He has cited an example of the locals’ attachment to place. Victoria Grounds, the daughter of Roy Grounds (famed for designing the NGV), was living in Canberra when she heard that her childhood home in Mount Eliza was on the market. She sold everything and bought it back.

There is something to be said for moving back to a place where the bushland meets the sea and where many residents celebrate the sight of Melbourne receding in their rear-vision mirrors at the end of the day.

Jon McMillan is a retired history and politics teacher.

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