Is this the Melbourne suburb that feels most like Sydney?

Just floating a theory here, but St Kilda is the Melbourne suburb that feels most like Sydney. It’s partly the proximity to water and the tang of salt air, although you’d have to be a doughty optimist to compare Port Phillip Bay to Sydney Harbour.

It’s equally the often deshabille beauty of its terraces and the bias towards Spanish mission and art deco architecture that brings interest to this ’burb six kilometres south of the CBD.

The fortunes of postcode 3182 have had more ups and downs than Luna Park’s Scenic Railway. The Victorians embraced it as their fashionable seaside playground before an economic bust saw an exodus of the wealthy and the rise of the boarding house. A potted history of St Kilda’s bohemian past must include Mirka and Georges Mora and their Tolarno Bistro, and the notorious Crystal Ballroom, which proved a crucible for the city’s post-punk scenesters including a young Nick Cave.

In 2019, Domain’s Liveability Index ranked St Kilda a healthy 26 out of Melbourne’s 307 suburbs. Points were scored for culture, cafes and the beach and lost over its lack of schools and over-supply of crime.

The lines between haves and have-nots are blurry in St Kilda, resisting gentrification’s homogenising forces. Anyone who cut their adult teeth on nights out in St Kilda will cheer its still-rugged heart. As Paul Kelly sings of The Esplanade in From St Kilda to Kings Cross, “I’d give you all of Sydney Harbour (all that land, all that water), for that one sweet promenade.”