Mentone Beach
| Mentone Beach | |
|---|---|
Looking south-east over Mentone Beach
|
|
| Location | Mentone, Victoria |
| Coordinates | 37°59′06″N 145°04′08″E / 37.98500°N 145.06889°E |
| Access | Beach Road, Mentone |
| Beach length | 1.6 km |
| Beach number | vicP045C |
| Hazard rating | 3/10 (Moderately hazardous) |
| Patrolled by | Mentone Lifesaving Club |
Mentone Beach is a beach located in Mentone, on Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia, 21 kilometres south from the Melbourne City Centre. Mentone beach is the northern section of a beach that extends alongside Beaumaris Bay from the cliffs at Rickett's Point in Beaumaris to Frankston in the south on the eastern shoreline of Port Phillip Bay.
Mentone Beach is one of the Port Phillip Bay beaches associated with the Heidelberg School of Australian artists.
Mentone Beach was formed when Port Phillip sunklands in southern Victoria were inundated to form Port Phillip Bay. The inundation was triggered in part by the Selwyn Fault on the east and the Rowsley Fault on the west side of the bay. The Beaumaris Monocline is a geological feature which is expressed in the cliffs near Beaumaris and Rickett's Point at the northern end of Mentone Beach. This structure controls the coastal indentation, and therefore the Mentone and Mordialloc beaches, which lie due south of Rickett's Point.
Seagull rock is a large rock in the shallow water off the beach. It is home to albatrosses, cormorants and seagulls.
OzCoast, the Geoscience Australia Online Coastal Information Database, describes Mentone Beach as:
Prior to European settlement the area around Mentone Beach was the land of the Bunurong people of the Kulin nation. Between 1839 and 1849 the Bunurong people and the area around Mentone Beach came under the control of the Port Phillip Protectorate.
In the summer of 1886 and 1887 Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin who had formed the Heidelberg School of painting set up a painters camp at Mentone to paint outdoors. It was here they first met Arthur Streeton painting at Rickett's Point. Roberts later described the meeting and his first impressions of Streeton, "'He was standing out on the wet rocks, painting there, and I saw that his work was full of light and air. We asked him to join us and that was the beginning of a long and delightful association." A number of significant and important Australian painting resulted from the Heidelberg School camps in and around Mentone Beach.
...
Wikipedia