Port Melbourne

If you don’t think a silk purse can be made from a sow’s ear, take a look at Port Melbourne. Once a busy transport hub feeding a range of industries and factories, Port Melbourne has become a collection of thriving residential enclaves on the fringe of the CBD, these days offering a lifestyle more in common with its more exclusive inner city bayside neighbours.

The rejuvenation of the area began in the 1990s with the waterfront Beacon Cove development. The mix of low-rise and high-rise apartment blocks, some offering awe-inspiring views of the bay, have proved popular with young professional renters and first-home buyers keen to balance their city working lives with the suburb’s outdoor/beachside culture. Today, apartments comprise half the dwellings. Warehouse conversions also offer alternative apartment accommodation. For families, there is the older residential quarter of Garden City, built in 1920s, featuring open public spaces and tree-lined streets with Old English homes and charming Victorian workers’ cottages, as well as ex-housing commission concrete and clinker-brick constructions.

The industrial site of Fishermans Bend is earmarked for urban renewal, with plans to develop the area into five neighbourhoods for housing as well as a new business precinct. What may have had the feel of a sow’s ear in the late 1990s, when median house and unit prices hovered around the low $300,000s, has more than a touch of silk purse today, with median prices for houses about $1 million and $650,000-plus for units.