| St Kilda, Victoria |
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St Kilda is a Suburb of Melbourne , the capital city of the state of Victoria , in Australia . It is located in the municipality of City Of Port Phillip . St Kilda is a beachside suburb about 7km south-east of the central city of Melbourne. It was originally settled because the high ground above the beach offered a cool fresh breeze during Melbourne's hot summer months. Within a few years of its founding it became a fashionable and wealthy area. St Kilda became a separate municipality in 1857 . During the Land Boom of the 1880s , St Kilda became a suburb of great mansions and palatial hotels, particularly along the seaside steets such as Fitzroy Street, Grey Street and Acland Street . The inland areas of St Kilda East were not so wealthy. During the Depression of the 1890s , however, St Kilda began to decline. The seaside area became an entertainment precinct for Melbourne's working classes, and the wealthy people moved further south to more exclusive suburbs such as Brighton . From World War I onwards, parts of St Kilda have become notorious for Prostitution and other vices, a reputation that still persists today. Since the 1960s it has become one of Melbourne's leading Gay And Lesbian residential areas. Today St Kilda is an area of sharp social contrast, with many homeless and other disadvantaged people living among the wealthy and fashionable who crowd its shops and cafes. In the 1930s St Kilda became a centre for Melbourne's growing Jew ish community and subsequently a growing Orthodox community developed with a number of Synagogue s and schools. In recent decades, however, the centre of Melbourne's Jewish community has moved eastwards to more affluent Caulfield . There are still Jewish neighbourhoods in East St Kilda, mainly of older and more Orthodox people and recent Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union , but the Jewish character of Acland Street , for example, has been lost. The Network Ten drama '' The Secret Life Of Us '' was set in St Kilda, mostly around Acland Street, Fitzroy Street and in the famous Esplanade Hotel . The influx of tourists and young backpackers and the increased gentrification of the area over the past 5 - 10 years, has lead many long term residents to leave, thus removing much of the bohemian/artistic character of the area. Many Melbourne people assume St Kilda is named after a saint called Kilda, and indeed a satirical "cult of Saint Kilda" has grown up among the area's many artists and writers. In fact the suburb takes its name from a ship called ''The Lady of St Kilda'', which visited Melbourne in July 1841 , five years after the founding of Melbourne. The ship was owned by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland , a member of a prominent British political family, and the main shopping street of St Kilda is named Acland Street after him. The ship was named for the island of Saint Kilda in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland , and the name of the island derives the Old Norse word ''skildir'', meaning "shields." For many years, St Kilda has had the highest population density in the Melbourne statistical area, and the highest for a metropolitan area outside of Sydney {Link without Title} . This density is reflected in the built form, which consists primarily of strata titled units, apartments and flats. In recent years an apartment trend in suburbs like Southbank , Docklands and the Melbourne CBD and St Kilda Road all rival the suburb's population density. The St Kilda breakwater juts out into Port Phillip Bay. It has a small colony of Little Penguin s.
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