Bayside City

Distinguished and Famous people from Bayside City

The Melbourne bayside suburbs have been home and working ground for artists, writers and conservationists. Beaumaris provides particularly clear connections, from streets captured in paintings to residents involved in protecting Port Phillip Bay.

🎨 Clarice Beckett

Clarice Beckett made the bays and streets around her Beaumaris home central subjects of her painting. She trained with Frederick McCubbin and Max Meldrum, developing a particular sensitivity to tone, mist and changing light. Domestic responsibilities limited her opportunities, but she continued painting and exhibiting. A homemade cart carried her equipment outdoors. The resulting images give familiar streets and shorelines an atmosphere that makes an ordinary morning or evening worth another look.

🎨 Arthur Boyd

Arthur and Yvonne Boyd moved to Beaumaris in 1955, exchanging his small Murrumbeena studio setting for their own weatherboard house. The period coincided with Arthur's association with Australian Galleries, which brought a regular income, and continued work as a painter. Coastal visits also recalled his teenage years at Rosebud. Beaumaris was an adult home in the development of his career, before the family moved to England in the late 1950s.

📚 John Iggulden

John Iggulden combined novel writing, gliding, business and conservation. Born in Brighton, he later lived in Beaumaris and became founding president of the Port Phillip Conservation Council. He was also an Australian national gliding champion. His books include The Storms of Summer and The Clouded Sky, while his working life included the family engineering business, Planet Lighting. It was a varied career, with concern for the bay sitting alongside interests in the air and on the page.

🤝 Marie Breen

Marie Breen moved to Brighton after marrying in 1928 and developed a long record in local welfare and political organising. She chaired the Brighton Baby Health Centre and rose through women’s organisations and the Liberal Party before election to the Senate in 1961. Family welfare remained central to her work, including support for increased payments even when that put her at odds with others in her party. She also helped overseas students and hosted young men studying in Australia. Her route into national politics grew through the practical work of committees, public speaking and caring for people in a local community.