The location identified in this guide is St Kilda, the bayside suburb of Melbourne in the City of Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia. It is not the remote St Kilda archipelago off Scotland, a separate place with a different history. Here the draw is the meeting of a metropolitan beach, a historic entertainment strip, a working urban neighbourhood and a pier where little penguins return after feeding in Port Phillip Bay.
The City of Port Phillip records that the proposed village was first called Fareham, then renamed St Kilda in 1842. Local tradition connects the name to the schooner Lady of St Kilda, anchored near the foreshore in 1841. The first Crown land sale followed in December 1842; St Kilda later became a municipal district in 1857. The story is a reminder that even a familiar modern suburb has layers of naming, settlement and civic change.
