St Leonards
Pleasant holiday resort on Port Phillip Bay
St Leonards is a small beach resort located 114 km south of Melbourne, 41 km east of Geelong and 10 km south of Portarlington at the tip of the Bellarine Peninsula which extends out into Port Phillip Bay. The area is notable for some beautiful scenery, calm waters for boating, yachting and family holidaymakers, a jetty which provides good anchorage and some excellent fishing opportunities.
A memorial on The Esplanade commemorates a landing by Matthew Flinders in 1802 and by John Batman in 1835. In fact, a stone cairn on a small reserve at Indented Head (4 km north) marks the exact spot where Batman's party landed before proceeding to the head of the bay where they encountered the future site of Melbourne.
It is said that St Leonards was established in the 1840s as a fishing base to supply Geelong but was largely deserted in the 1850s due to the goldrush. Whether the dates are right or not, it is clear that it did operate as a fishing port and that it supported a large Chinese community at one time.