The Pier Hotel

The Place Where Frankston Came to Life 

If you stand on the corner of Davey Street and the Nepean Highway today, it feels like pure movement. Traffic lights. Bus stops. Coffee cups in hand.

But this corner has always been about arrival.

Long before freeways and shopping centres, people came here dusty, tired and ready to rest. That promise never left. It simply changed its soundtrack.

The Pier Hotel has been many things throughout its life. A country retreat. A seaside landmark. A pub. A maze of bars and rooms. A live music venue. A nightclub. A place where people fainted, fell in love, got kicked out or stayed until the lights came on.

For many locals, its loudest, wildest and most unforgettable years were the 1970s and 1980s. But the story began more than a century earlier.

1850s–1950s

From Country Hotel to Coastal Landmark

The Pier Hotel’s story began in 1854, when publican Samuel Packham opened the Frankston Hotel on this site.

At the time, Frankston was little more than a coastal stopping point, reached by long journeys on horseback or cart along rough tracks from Melbourne.

In 1875, the hotel was purchased by Mark Young, who renamed it the Pier Hotel and expanded it into a prominent two-storey building facing the bay.

Young would go on to shape much of early Frankston life, most notably by constructing enclosed sea baths offshore during the 1880s.

Timber walkways stretched into the bay towards a granite-based enclosure nearly 100 metres offshore. High walls provided privacy, while swimmers crossed a suspension bridge over Kananook Creek to reach the baths.

Visitors could arrive dusty from travel, step inside the hotel and then walk out over the water for a saltwater swim before returning inside.

The Pier was never just accommodation. It was part of the outing.

The arrival of the railway transformed Frankston into a popular seaside escape for Melbourne day-trippers and holidaymakers. By the middle of the 20th century, photographs showed neat rows of early cars parked outside the Pier Hotel, which had already become a familiar meeting place for locals and visitors.

This era established the building.

What followed embedded it in Frankston’s memory.

What Happened to Young’s Baths?

Young’s sea baths quickly became one of Frankston’s proudest attractions, but Port Phillip Bay never stays still.

Storms, tides and shifting sand steadily damaged the structures. Repairs became constant and costly, and once the baths passed into council hands, their upkeep proved unsustainable.

By the early 1900s, the baths had been dismantled. The walkways disappeared, the walls were removed and the sea reclaimed the space.

Today, Young’s Baths survive only in photographs, sketches and the stories passed down by families who remembered that long walk over the water for a swim in the bay.

The 1970s

When the Pier Got Loud

By the 1970s, the Pier was no longer simply a hotel.

It was where things happened.

Music filled the building from top to bottom. Rooms shifted purpose and changed names over time, and people still debate what was located where.

The Driftwood Room. The Telecom Bar. The Banquet Room. The Snake Pit.

The details may have blurred, but the feeling has not.

Many nights were unplanned. Someone would hear music coming from inside and simply walk through the door. Cars circled the block searching for a space, while others stayed in the car park talking to whoever happened to be nearby.

By midnight, strangers often were not strangers anymore.

Boardriders and Surfriders packed the rooms. Bands played loudly and late.

Skyhooks. Jo Jo Zep. AC/DC. Ariel.

When Matt Taylor and Western Flyer’s equipment failed to arrive one night, they played an impromptu unplugged set instead.

The Pier was crowded, hot and electric. Groups drifted between rooms and sometimes did not find one another again until closing.

Tempers occasionally flared. Nights spilled into the street and sometimes ended at the old police station.

Locals still refer to one particular night simply as “the riot.” Ask anyone who was there and the details change, but most remember the same moment. The sudden quiet when the music stopped and everyone realised the night had turned.

Rough around the edges. Chaotic. Unforgettable.

The 1980s

The Golden Years

During the 1980s, the Pier became one of the peninsula’s most significant live music venues.

Bands played from Wednesday through Sunday. Some performances were free with a handbill collected earlier in the week. Others cost just one dollar on a Saturday afternoon.

Cold Chisel.

Australian Crawl.

Divinyls.

The Angels.

Models.

Little River Band.

John Farnham.

Jimmy Barnes.

For many locals, the years are remembered by who was playing at the Pier rather than by what else was happening in their lives.

People recognised faces long before they knew names. Friendships began, relationships started and ended, and then everyone met again the following weekend because that was simply where you went.

Upstairs was the bandroom with its famously sticky carpet. Downstairs was the Driftwood Bar, later known as the Snake Pit, with concrete floors and tables bolted to the ground.

The Marina Bar upstairs became a rite of passage for teenagers who were finally old enough to walk through its doors.

Then came the 21st Century Dance Club.

Its revolving dance floor earned the nickname “the Chick Rotisserie.” On opening night, a domed roof above the dance floor was meant to open and project a spotlight into the sky.

Instead, it startled birds roosting above, sending them flying and leaving guests covered in feathers and droppings.

The dome was reportedly never opened again.

The following weekend, the line was longer than ever.

People came back just to see what might happen next.

Limousines pulled up outside. A love-heart-shaped bar stood inside. Plasma balls glowed across the dance floor.

For a moment, Frankston felt like the centre of the world.

The People Behind the Scenes

The Pier’s story belongs as much to the people who worked there as it does to those who visited.

Regular patrons became known to staff, and staff became part of the experience. Orders were often started before they were spoken. Bouncers learned to read the mood of a crowd early. Bartenders sensed when a night would be easy and when it would not.

In the earlier years, there were rules reflecting a very different time. Women were not permitted in the public bar, so families gathered in the lounge instead.

Children waited after school for parents to finish their shifts. Some spent weekends cleaning the car park, picking up empty bottles and takeaway wrappers left behind from the night before.

For many families, the Pier was not simply somewhere they went.

It was part of working life. Part of growing up.

A Building After Hours

Long-time staff members and musicians often said the building felt different after the doors closed.

There was rarely anything dramatic, only small things that were difficult to explain. Sounds from upstairs when nobody was rostered there. A door found open after it had been locked. Footsteps heard in empty corridors.

The stories varied depending on who told them and were usually shared with a smile rather than certainty.

Over time, the idea settled into local folklore. It was never something proven, simply something mentioned whenever former staff spoke about late finishes and those final walks through the empty building.

Mid-1990s–2000s

The Quiet Years

Eventually, the noise faded.

Rooms closed and the upper levels sat unused while Frankston continued to change around the building.

The Pier remained, but its rhythm had shifted.

People still pointed towards it as they drove past, often beginning with the same words:

“You should have seen it back then.”

For a while, it appeared that the Pier’s loudest days were behind it.

2010s–Today

A New Chapter

In the 2010s, live music returned with the opening of the Pier Bandroom upstairs, once again giving locals a reason to stay close to home to see major performers.

Today, the building holds many roles at once.

Front bar. Sports pub. Bandroom. Meeting place. Landmark on the corner.

Across more than a century and a half, the Pier Hotel has watched Frankston grow, stumble, celebrate and reinvent itself.

Some of its stories have been written down. Most live only in memory, in half-remembered nights, debates about which room was where and the simple sentence:

“I was there.”

Every generation believes it knew the real Pier.

Maybe they all did.

Because the Pier was never just one place.

It was the version you remember, still standing on that corner.