VICPlanned settlement
Altona
A land-boom seaside suburb that industry finally filled.
1888Altona Bay Estate land sale
WHAT STARTED IT
Altona sits on a shallow bay of Port Phillip between Kororoit and Skeleton creeks, on flat land grazed from Alfred Langhorne’s 1840s homestead. Land-boom promoters saw the bayfront as a seaside suburb, and the same flat land later suited refineries and chemical works.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
The Altona Bay Estate syndicate laid on a railway branch and lengthened the pier, but after the 1888 sales few people settled and the trains stopped in 1890; brown-coal mining and dairying followed. A new seaside subdivision from 1917, the Commonwealth Oil Refinery in 1924 and postwar refineries and petrochemical plants finally filled the suburb.
TURNING POINTS
1888The Altona Bay Estate holds its first land sale on 8 September, promising a railway from Newport.
1890The estate’s train service ends, leaving the subdivision thinly settled.
1917Sydney developers begin selling a new seaside subdivision, and trains run again.
1924The Commonwealth Oil Refinery begins production east of Seaholme.
1957Altona is severed from Werribee shire as a separate shire, becoming a city in 1968.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A bayside residential suburb in Hobsons Bay, with Pier Street shops, a beach and pier, and industry extending inland. Langhorne’s homestead still stands in Queen Street.