Parkdale

A small, seaside suburb on Beaumaris Bay between Mordialloc and Mentone, Parkdale took its name from an early homesteader named William Parker when the railway engineers decided to build a station alongside a cluster of five bayside shops 23km south of Melbourne in 1920.

Within 10 years the shopping centre had increased fivefold and the suburb was entrenched. Residential development gradually spread inland from the beachfront and in 1958 Parkdale had the distinction of being chosen as the site of one of Victoria's first drive-in shopping centres, Thrift Park.

By the turn of the 21st century the shopping centre, unchanged save for the addition of a Safeway supermarket, was still serving the people of Parkdale.

The suburb sits just to the south of Moorabbin Airport and is within a few minutes of a cluster of golf courses including Woodlands, Keysborough, Southern, Kingswood, Kingston Heath, Cheltenham, Victoria, Sandringham and Royal Melbourne.