Pearcedale, Victoria

Pearcedale is a township and coastal rural locality in Victoria, Australia, 49 km south-east of Melbourne's central business district. Its local government areas are the City of Casey and the Shire of Mornington Peninsula. A bus service operates to and from Frankston railway station via Baxter. At the 2011 Census, Pearcedale had a population of 3,871.GeographyPearcedale is a township and rural locality on the northwestern corner of Western Port, in the northern extremities of the Mornington Peninsula. The land is relatively flat with a rich and sandy soil type ideal for market gardening. Its mangrove saltmarsh coastline on Watson Inlet, west of Quail Island, includes the Langwarrin Creek estuary as well as numerous other small creek estuaries. These mangrove saltmarshes are of international significance and are incorporated within the Yaringa Marine National Park as well as being protected under the United Nations Ramsar Convention. The mangrove saltmarshes are not accessible, by land, to the public.HistoryGeneralPearcedale was originally called Langwarrin and was also known at various times as Langwarrin Estate or Old Langwarrin. When the Mornington and Stony Point railway lines opened in the late 1880s, the railway station near the Military Camp (...now a Flora and Fauna Reserve) was named Langwarrin. A new town developed east of the railway station and was locally called New Langwarrin. A meeting of rate payers was held in November 1905 and it was voted to rename the original town Pearcedale, to avoid confusion with this new settlement of New Langwarrin. The name Pearcedale came from local landowner Nathaniel Pearce. Nathaniel and his wife Mary Grace are first listed in the Shire of Cranbourne Rate Books in 1894, when they purchased an orchard on 26 acres (about 10 hectares) at Langwarrin Estate. They had eight children. Mary was a midwife and helped deliver many babies in the area.