The best argument I ever lost with my wife brought us to my suburb

August 31, 2026 — 7:00pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

It’s a cruel irony that hardly anyone in Melbourne knows where my suburb is but every summer I will be trapped in a traffic jam quietly cursing all the thousands of people who clog my roads, take up my car parks and even park across my driveway just to get to our beautiful beach.

Despite that beach, my suburb is for most a forgettable few kilometres of nondescript housing along the Nepean Highway on the way down the peninsula. Bonbeach doesn’t scream “look at me” like our neighbouring suburbs Chelsea and Carrum, with their bustling main roads and retail areas, or Patterson Lakes with its luxurious network of artificial canals.

Most locals (are we Bonbeachers?) don’t particularly care what other people think about their suburb. There is pride and parochialism in our sports – footy, cricket and netball teams (go Sharks) – but when I tell anyone outside the Kingston municipality (and quite a few within) that I am from Bonbeach, I get that vague “I-don’t-know-where-that-is-but-I-will-pretend-I-do” look. There is nothing special about Bonbeach to the outsider, but to the people who live here, everything is special. I can’t point to a major shopping strip, landmark, or civic institution that might put us on the map.

Here you’ll find hundreds of houses with birds of paradise plants in the front garden, older houses making room for newer ones, kids up and down the street first on trikes, then bikes, e-bikes and then cars. Perhaps like many other parts of Melbourne, the old wooden bungalows on huge blocks of land are making way for newer, bigger, shinier developments. Meanwhile, real estate marketing often describes us as one of Melbourne’s “best little secrets”.

We are a content........

© The Age