St Kilda is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) south from the Melbourne city centre. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip. As of 2006 Census the population has 16,122 people. St Kilda was named after a schooner Lady of St Kilda (which moored at the main beach for much of 1841) by Charles La Trobe and the ship's master and early settler Lieutenant James Ross Lawrence. During the Edwardian and Victorian eras, St Kilda became a favoured suburb of Melbourne's elite, and many palatial mansions were constructed along its hills and waterfront. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, St Kilda served a similar function for Melburnians as did Coney Island to the residents of New York City and its history draws an interesting parallel. Densely populated postwar St Kilda became Melbourne's red-light district, home to low-cost rooming houses. Since the late 1960s, St Kilda became known for its culture of bohemianism as home to many prominent artists, musicians and subcultures, including punks[citation needed], LGBT[citation needed] and techno scene[citation needed]. While some of these groups still maintain a presence in St Kilda, in recent years the district has experienced rapid gentrification pushing many lower socio-economic groups out to other areas. St Kilda is home to many of Melbourne's famous visitor attractions including Luna Park, the Esplanade Hotel, Acland Street and Fitzroy Street. It is home to St Kilda Beach, Melbourne's most famous beach, several renowned theatres and several of Melbourne's big events and festivals.

Before being officially named St Kilda in 1841 by Charles La Trobe, who was superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales, the area was known by several names, including 'Green Knoll' and 'The Village of Fareham'. It was named after the schooner the Lady of St Kilda, which was owned between 1834 and 1840 by Sir Thomas Acland. In 1840 Thomas Acland sold the vessel to Jonathan Cundy Pope of Plymouth who sailed for Port Phillip in Melbourne in February 1841. While there the vessel was moored at the main beach for most of that year, which was soon known as "the St. Kilda foreshore." There never was a 'Saint' Kilda. St Kilda is the name given to the World Heritage listed Scottish archipelago, west of the outer Hebrides, after which the above mentioned schooner was named. The archipelago comprises several islands with dramatic sea cliffs up to 430 metres in height. According to the United Nations World Conservation Monitoring Centre the name 'St Kilda' derives from Skildar the Viking name for shields, reflecting the outline of the islands which resembled shields when viewed from the sea. Skildar was transcribed in error by Lucas Waghenaer in his 1592 charts without the trailing r and with a period after the S, creating S.Kilda. This was in turn assumed to stand for a saint by other map makers, creating the form that has been used for several centuries, St Kilda.

Melbourne's Luna Park is a historic amusement park located on the foreshore of Port Phillip Bay in St Kilda, Victoria, an inner suburb of Melbourne, Australia. It opened on 13 December 1912 and has been operating almost continuously ever since. This was the first of the four Luna Parks that were built in Australia, of which only Melbourne and Luna Park Sydney are still operating. The other two, now defunct, Luna Parks were at Glenelg in South Australia (1930–1934) and at Redcliffe in Queensland (1944–1966). The St Kilda park was developed by American showman J D Williams, in company with the three Phillips brothers (reputedly from Seattle), who had all had experience in the amusement and cinema industry in the US. Their Chief Engineer and main designer was Englishman T H Eslick, who, according to the opening day brochure, had worked on numerous parks around the world. Williams returned to the US in 1913 to help found First National Films which subsequently became Warner Brothers. The Phillips brothers stayed on and ran the park until their deaths in the 1950s.

A consortium headed by Melbourne transport magnate Lindsay Fox bought Luna Park in early 2005, pledging to restore it to the glory he remembers from his 1940s youth, spent in nearby Windsor. Since the multi-million dollar purchase, there has been no major overhaul, but the Scenic Railway Station was given a facelift, popular temporary attractions such as the Lara Croft Tomb Raider experience have been presented, and a major section of the Scenic railway itself underwent major repairs between December 2007 and June 2008. The park's triangular beachfront site is on government land, bounded by the O'Donnell Gardens on one side and Cavell Street on the other. Across this street is a larger triangle of foreshore crown land known as the 'Triangle Site', occupied by the grand 1920s Palais Theatre, the 1970s Palace nightclub (burned down in 2007), and carparking. The City of Port Phillip in consultation with the Victorian State Government ran a tender process in 2007 to restore the Palais Theatre and redevelop the remainder of the site. Lindsay Fox was part of a consortium that submitted a proposal which was unsuccessful. Melbourne's Luna Park is said to be more popular in general than Sydney's Luna Park, as Sydney's has no large rollercoaster, and Melbourne's is more authentic. The park has featured on several occasions in the popular Australian soap opera Neighbours Luna Park as a whole is listed by the National Trust of Australia, and the main heritage features are listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.

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