As an impressionable 12-year-old, I had my first encounter with Mount Eliza in the summer of 1959. At the time, it was a hamlet at the northern elevated end of the Mornington Peninsula, consisting of a general store and petrol station with a thick coastal tea-tree backdrop and impressive views across Port Phillip Bay about 11⁄2 hours from Melbourne. On a very humid day, my parents and I joined many other day-trippers perched on the clifftops overlooking Port Phillip Bay, eagerly anticipating the filming of On the Beach .
Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner on the set of On The Beach, which was filmed on location in Melbourne. For once, the tabloid newspapers had got it right. “Hollywood comes to Mount Eliza”, blared the headlines and, sure enough, down there not far away on the sandy beach, we could see Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and the director Stanley Kramer creating a film version of Neville Shute’s novel about a nuclear war scenario.
In a country burdened by “the tyranny of distance”, it was remarkable that such famous actors would fly across the world to Melbourne . Gardner was at the time involved in a tempestuous relationship with the legendary Frank Sinatra, then stuck back in Palm Springs. Her admirable feistiness and flirtatiousness were fodder for local journalists.
Video footage of the day captures the celebratory atmosphere: yachts, laughing children, beach umbrellas and seagulls, as if in a painting. Since then, the population of Mount Eliza has grown, and .
